Best Movies I Saw 2009-2011, #38-34

38:  THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (1978) accomplishes something that very few genre horror movies are capable of: it will, no kidding, frighten, disturb, and haunt you. Made on a tiny budget, THE TOOLBOX MURDERS is a very violent, even a shocking movie, an exploitation movie that is, at times, clearly intended to be offensive. THE TOOLBOX MURDERS is also, unlike most such movies, thoughtful and thought-provoking; it's so carefully written and directed and acted, that it is consistently absorbing cinema, despite its technical and budgetary limitations. The first twenty minutes portray a masked killer, carrying a toolbox, attacking several pretty girls, in various states of undress, in multiple apartments, in the same seedy building, one after another, in real time. It's the slasher classic equivalent of the first half-hour of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, a cinematic experience so grueling I must admit it made me shut THE TOOLBOX MURDERS off, the first time I tried to watch it. But I found myself unable to shake off and forget that opening sequence, and after several months of thinking about it, I eventually realized that what had upset me into shutting the movie off, was how genuinely harrowingly effective it was. So lengthy consideration drew me back to THE TOOLBOX MURDERS, and I found, to my surprise, that following the unforgettable graphic carnage of its opening sequence, THE TOOLBOX MURDERS switches gears. The remainder of the movie is tense, character-driven drama, as well as traditional genre murder mystery; the rich complex script also explores criminal psychology extensively by way of dialogue, rather than more excessive violence, though the movie never ceases to be deeply disturbing and discomfiting. Only its first half-hour is calculated to satisfy "horror" fans, but any audience that appreciates heavy serious drama, will enjoy THE TOOLBOX MURDERS more than they would expect.

37:  EYE OF THE DEVIL (1966) is a stylish, intelligent "castle Gothic," directed by J. Lee (CAPE FEAR) Thompson, starring David Niven, Donald Pleasance, and an extraordinarily beautiful young actress by the name of Sharon Tate, whose promise is, in this movie, heartbreakingly apparent. (You can almost feel Roman Polanski falling in love, while you watch it.) In EYE OF THE DEVIL a woman who's married a scion of an ancient family, finds that some kind of mysterious cult, which holds sway over the entire village, also somehow controls her husband, and expects some horrible sacrifice of him. I don't actually know whether anyone but me ever uses the phrase Castle Gothic, but what I mean by it, is, any low-budget genre production which uses a rented European castle for its primary location. The market for Castle Gothics was entirely glutted between 1960 and 1975; the Corman Poe "cycle," and the British Hammer gothics, are only the most famous among hundreds of movies, many of which tell stories a lot like this one does; and though I can't be sure, I suspect that the main reason EYE OF THE DEVIL has been largely forgotten, is, there were so many movies made, so much like this one, that serious movies geeks had trouble remembering it as distinct from so many similar pictures, playing across the next decade. Perhaps the fact that EYE OF THE DEVIL is just old enough to lack graphic sex and violence, has something to do with it. In any case, it's been forgotten unjustly: EYE OF THE DEVIL has an intelligent script and a great cast; gorgeous widescreen black-and-white photography, and beautiful locations, are backed up by careful attention to visual detail in every department; EYE OF THE DEVIL may be severely lacking in originality, but it's an eerie, atmospheric, and technically accomplished movie, that is, if this happens to be the kind of thing you like, extremely enjoyable.

36:  THE UNSUSPECTED (1947) is an unjustly obscure murder mystery directed by Michael Curtiz, and while it’s not quite as good as his classics CASABLANCA and MILDRED PIERCE, it’s close enough to bear comparison without wilting. Like those much more famous Curtiz classics, THE UNSUSPECTED is a quietly dazzling exercise in technical perfection; if there’s anything to complain of, it is that THE UNSUSPECTED is so carefully calculated, its every bit of available narrative space is crowded so conscientiously, that there is, somehow, no room left to convince us to care much about any of its many morally ambiguous characters. THE UNSUSPECTED is a lot like LAURA, but maybe actually smarter and more complicated than LAURA, and if that sounds like maybe THE UNSUSPECTED is a little too smart and too complicated for its own good, that may be more reasons why it’s so unjustly obscure. Claude Rains plays a professionally creepy radio writer and announcer, whose hit show consists of live readings of true crime stories; the extraordinarily detailed plot, involving several murders, is driven by several ways the many characters trick one another and the audience into believing untruths, some of which trickery takes advantage of then-futuristic recording equipment kept in the antagonist’s soundproofed home office. This is as classy as studio era Hollywood murder mysteries get, and deserves wide rediscovering.

35:  TRADER HORN (1931), a semi-documentary epic about African exploration, is a timeless classic, one of the greatest jungle adventure movies ever made; it's the cinematic grandfather of all Tarzan movies, of all "mondo" movies, of Werner Herzog's jungle adventure classics, and that's just off the top of my head. But you don't have to keep reminding yourself of all this historical significance, to help you sit through TRADER HORN, because if you have any taste at all for movies this old, or for jungle adventure pictures, TRADER HORN will consistently stun and awe you, from beginning to end. TRADER HORN sure works hard to make itself unwelcome, by contemporary standards, by way of raging political incorrectness: its attitude about race is pretty rough sometimes, and there's really no excuse for some of the animal cruelty onscreen (some of it was captured on the fly in the wild, but some of it was, infamously, staged, by starving Mexican zoo animals into attacking each other). Nevertheless TRADER HORN is a staggering achievement: the production shot on location, deep in the jungle, under such stressful conditions that some of the cast and crew became seriously ill (lawsuits ensued, and the beautiful intense starlet Edwina Booth never totally recovered). (This, by the way, landed on my plate via the Oscar excavations project: it was nominated for Best Picture.)

34: NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS (1975) is a very Gothic Spanish zombie movie, which I wrote about at length, about nine months ago, when I first began this three-year list thing I'm doing, here. If you back out and scroll down, you can read what I said, then. (If you notice that this movie is now ranked ahead of several other titles, when it was second-to-last on the original list, the explanation for this, is that during the last nine months, I saw several of these movies, a third time. NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS is the kind of movie you like even more the third time you see it, than you did, the second time, which you probably know, if you're a serious enough movie geek to enjoy reading this blog, is extraordinarily high and rare praise, for any movie.)

The Best Movies I saw 2009-2011, Belatedly Continued

I hope my readers will accept my apologies, for disappearing from this space for almost nine months, without even bothering to drop by to post an explanation. The explanation is, of course, that I've been busy and distracted. 2011 has been an exciting year for me.

Easily the most interesting of the many distractions that have kept me away from this blog, for the better part of the year, was, spending several months preparing to do a serious piece of screen acting, in a show that started shooting in October. Words cannot express how deeply honored I am to be appearing in the new James VanBebber movie GATOR GREEN. Anyone who's talked with me about movies, any time in the last several years, knows that Jim is one of my heroes, because I can't discuss the current state of the art, without asserting my opinion that James VanBebber's second feature THE MANSON FAMILY is the best underground/regional movie ever made. I've been one of the many fans eagerly awaiting Jim's next project, and I could not be more proud of being the right man, in the right place, at the right time, to become a part of that project, as a cast member. I could not be more thankful for the opportunity to work with Jim, as an actor; Jim's writing a hell of a character for me to play, and though, as of this writing, I haven't yet seen the stuff we shot in October, I hear I did good.

I guess I should say, before abandoning the subject, that although I'm closely involved with GATOR GREEN, this blog will not become the best place to watch for news, as GATOR GREEN slouches toward completion, nor will it be the first original source for information about any other movies I may happen to take up helping to make. I'm not particularly interested in blogging about my work as a filmmaker, while I'm doing it; if I do, somehow, become more interested, I'll take that up on another blog, somewhere, one that does not yet exist. Though I may mention GATOR GREEN, or other cinematic works-in-progress, in this space, this space exists for me to play the movie critic, in it, and I cannot imagine that I'll cease to try hard to keep this space focused on that writerly "mission." There are, I'm sure, already better pages to keep an eye on, to keep track of Jim VanBebber's progress, than this one, and most likely, there always will be.

(By the way: I'm not now, nor have I ever yet been, posting images or links, on this blog, because I'm too paranoid about the shifting state of the law, pertaining to the posting of borrowed images or links to other pages, to indulge myself, at all. But if anyone reading this wants to go ahead and append relevant links, in the comments section, I think that for now, I can convince myself to pretend that I believe I'm not legally responsible for that "content.")

Because I now have something like two to four weeks, in which to close the subject of The Best Movies I Saw 2009-2011, I'm going to tighten up the (remaining) list, to 39 titles (that's 13 per year, which is how I was doing it before 2009, anyway - I chose 13 movies a year, rather than the traditional 10, because 10 seems to me to be, in this context, an arbitrary number, and 13 is another arbitrary number, pretty close by, that I happen to like better). I'm also going to try to restrain the wordage per title, to some smaller number than what I was blowing on each movie, back in February and March, but, you know, on the subject of limiting word counts, given that I'm the only editor around here, I hesitate to commit myself. I will try to remain committed to blogging at least once a week, and hope I can get through this list in time to "do" a 2012 list about when all the other movie critics do their 2012 "best of" lists. (Don't laugh. I really will try.)

Okay, so here they are, now, clearly ranked and numbered - the 39 BEST MOVIES I SAW, 2009 TO 2011:

39:  TARKA THE OTTER (1979) is a remarkably beautiful wildlife movie as narrative drama, that ought to be more widely known and seen. But TARKA THE OTTER has been almost completely forgotten, because while it carries itself, for the most part, like a "family" movie, TARKA sells its BAMBIesque anti-hunting theme, in part, by using imagery so gruesme, that most American parents would be loathe to share it with anyone's children. Hell, this material will disturb most adults: picture, if you will, if BAMBI had been a live action movie, shot like a documentary, using wild and trained animals as actors - this is, in fact, a pretty good thumbnail description of TARKA THE OTTER (which, like BAMBI, is based on a minor literary classic). Now imagine that this "live action BAMBI" includes, not just a frightening hunt sequence that ends with the title character's mother dead, but also, that the sequence includes several lingering shots of the mother's corpse, hanging by its feet, dripping blood, while dramatic music plays, and the animal "lead actor" looks on, whimpering in horror. Now you have an accurate, unexaggerated idea, of where TARKA THE OTTER dares to go. (Seriously - I'm not kidding. Go check out the IMDb users' comments on TARKA THE OTTER; you'll find that most of their authors are there, mostly to express shock and outrage over the portrayal of Tarka's mother's death.) This is not to say that this content is in what I'd say is, generally speaking, bad taste; if you appreciate animal stories, that do not refrain from portraying violence in a straightforward naturalistic fashion, I strongly recommend that you seek out TARKA THE OTTER, as it is the live action close cousin to the animated classics WATERSHIP DOWN and THE PLAGUE DOGS (with which it would make a terrific, if somewhat depressing, double feature).  Also, if you're really impressed by movies that use a clever combination of training and trickery to turn various animals into creditable "stars" for use in structured narrative storytelling, you really need to see TARKA THE OTTER; I've never seen another movie of this type, deploy more animals as cast members, counted as individuals or as species, in a narrative so formally complex. It rivals or outshines every established classic in this area, including THE BEAR, which tends to ne the acknowledged masterpiece among fans of animal "acting," (when I can find them, outside my own family, which doesn't happen often).

Okay: I intend to take up this subject, in this space, with #38, in about a week. Wish me luck...!