Maya 1989

Tagline-Twilight is the fracture between the worlds.

At the beginning of the movie, a voice over explains the curse of the evil Mayan king Ze Bul Bai as the reddish sun sets against the dark semi-lit sky. It is stated that the word zei bul bai means devil and that he was the most evil of all human beings but even so he was protected by the god of death. The legend in the story had it that ze bul bai attempted to vanquish the Kotua tribe but failed, and upon his failure he escaped into the darkness of the night at twilight. In the movie, twilight represents a fracture between the two disjunct worlds of life and death. However, the king swore to return one day to seek revenge on the Kotuas by tearing off the chests of each and every member of the tribe.

It is apparent that the curse of ze bul bai hangs heavy upon the lives of the Kotuas as they live in perpetual fear of his return and the doom that would follow, resulting in widespread bloodshed and destruction of the established order of the residents in the rural Mexican village in which the story is set. In the first scene itself, a young boy asks his grandfather about the time when ze bul bai would come back for his bloodthirsty revenge. The grandfather responds by saying that it was certain to happen at some future date when ze bul bai would cross over from the land of the death to which he had earlier escaped.

In the next scene, the protagonist Lisa Slivak’s father Solomon is shown tensed as he writes a letter to a person named Franseco stating that he has surrendered without any help from him and that he is unable to wait further. He also reveals that he has managed to cross the border between the two worlds that both had been researching on and that he is bound a certain destiny from which there is no return.  Then he leaves on a journey to a mysterious mountain where he is attacked by a wild haired and white eyed girl who transforms into a wolf and injures his arm. He is led into the center of the mountain wilderness from where he ascends a pyramid and is then murdered by an unseen assailant with an axe.

Lisa arrives to receive the body of her father and is shocked to see mysterious incisions all over the body that nobody is able or willing to explain. She soon realizes that though her father had few friends and acquaintances, everyone in the village is harbouring a terrifying secret that they seem to accept as part of their fate and are unwilling to even discuss. For instance, it is shown that the village residents celebrate a festival of death in which a young kotua member is offered for sacrifice atop the same pyramid in which Solomon met his death as a manner of appeasement to the god of death who keeps the spirit of ze bul bai at bay. Also, when Lisa breaks into the mortuary one night and sees other victims with similar incisions on their bodies as her father’s body had, she is told by the doctor that the deaths are part of a ritual and refuses to offer any credible explanation for the deaths. It is surprising for Lisa to notice that even in the face of gruesome and inexplicable deaths, the residents appear unflustered and nonchalant until she realizes the extent to which the place and its people are seeped in superstitions and the deaths surrounding them are perceived to be part of a curse that has been firmly ensconced in belief through each passing generation. Lisa also discovers Solomon’s manuscript among his papers which describes how ze bul bai’s curse spreads across the village like a curse, a fear that has been passed on from one generation to the other and that it is a way of understanding the evil in each person’s soul.

Lisa befriends an American expatriate Peter who was close to her father and attempts to unravel the mystery behind her father’s death and they soon become witness to a slew of murders that bear signs of a supernatural destructive power. The story of Maya is paper thin but it is the tense atmosphere, the settings and the particularly gory and inventive deaths that makes the film a real teat for horror fans. There are no comedic interludes or light moments to distract from the heavy sense of doom and helplessness that each of the characters experience in the small village where the action has been set. The bizarreness of the film’s monotone is amplified by the dark lighting (with blue hues which imposes a gloomy atmosphere) as well as the sweaty sex scenes between a few of the characters (main and fringe) that pepper the narrative without any apparent connection to the main theme. The main character is also a grungy looking and sweaty expatriate, a sea diver by occupation, who has shifted to Mexico for a better life but ends up living in a dirty hellhole, always in debt to locals for drinks or food, but he does benefit from some sheet crumpling with a Mexican woman. The latter is targeted by a pair of obnoxious American teenagers who attempt to rape her but are instead done in by the supernatural force which is unleashed by the wrath of the Mayan King ze bul bai. At first therefore it seems that the persons who receive such gruesome deaths have done some wrongs (eg-on the protagonist’s girlfriend) but later it becomes apparent that the mysterious force strikes at random and even takes innocent lives, such as Solomon’s live in partner Maria who is literally hanged by sharp metal hooks or the Mexican girl whose head is repeatedly bashed against the bath tub till her nose splits in two parts.

Later in the movie, Peter discloses that the fracture between the worlds or the border between the world of living and that of the dead is based on the Mayan belief that there existed a world between humans and their reflected image. The local shaman interpreted the distinction as meaning that there were two ways of looking at one’s image, one being the superficial and straight manner, and the other that allowed a person to travel beyond the reflected image to cross the boundary between the life and death.

Peter tells Lisa that he, Fransesco and her father experimented with mirrors in an attempt to cross over the line between life and death which represented an alternative reality and although he and Franseco withdrew in fear, her father pushed on and once he managed to cross the line, he encountered death. After his girlfriend’s death, Peter is all eager to leave Mexico but at Lisa’s insistence he draws out Franseco (who is the shaman and also the doctor of the community who was Solomon’s friend and confidante) and persuades him to repeat the experiment and thwart the curse over the land. They succeed at great cost for Franseco who loses his life, with the result that the sacrifice on the pyramid is stopped and thereafter Peter and Lisa try to leave Mexico, presumably to the US. At the airport however as Lisa fumbles in her bag for tickets, her glasses drop to the floor and a small girl picks it up and runs away. Peter follows her and at the last scene where the frame freezes it is shown that it is the same ungodly girl who was the harbinger of Solomon’s death. The fate of Peter and Lisa thus remains unclear but it is obvious that the curse has not been lifted as supposed and thus it would seem that all Kotuas are still exposed to horrible deaths by king ze bul bai’s curse.

The music of Maya is ominous throughout the movie and the ominousness is reiterated by the motifs of stiff and menacing porcelain figures of Mayan kings and warriors and the mirror which supposedly brought out the darkness in persons and also acted as the interface between the world of life and death from which the curse of ze bul bai emanates.

At one level the film also serves to illustrate the rural ignorance and reliance of superstitions which besets the village folk and makes it easier for them to digest the vengeance of the king. It is for this reason that they appear to celebrate the festival of death on a full moon night atop ze bul bai’s pyramid, in which a young boy from the Kotua tribe is offered for sacrifice in order to appease the god of death who keeps the his spirit at bay. The village people are not much affected by the violent deaths because they see it as part of a recurring ritual associated with the King which culminates with a sacrifice on the celebrations.

For me, the intersection between myth and reality, superstition and terrifying vulnerability of the villagers through the workings of a curse feared by them was most interesting as also was the notion that the mirror was an artifice of evil which represented a contradistinction between the superficial image and the dark side of humans, as also between life and death itself.

Marcello Avellone is a virtually unknown director from Italy whose directing credits include only Maya and another horror film Specters (Spettri, 1987) but with Maya, he shows his flair for constructing horror that lingers on long after its run time and persists in creating unease in the viewer’s mind. It was released on DVD by Dragon Films but is now out of print and the only copies available are those created by collectors for fans of “lost” cults. (check Cult Action DVD and Revok websites). An earlier VHS tape has hardcoded Japanese subtitles on the print but is still watchable.

BODY DOUBLE, 1984

Tagline- You can't believe everything you see.

After the well-received Dressed to Kill ( 1980), Brian De Palma returned in 1984 to make the sleeper “cult” mystery movie titled “Body Double”.  The movie is a clear nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic style and contains all elements commonly employed by the auteur, such as obsession, voyeurism and of course murder ! The theme is also commonplace- a man must determine the truth and defend himself after being falsely framed for a murder he didn’t commit. Also, the motive for the murder is nothing new- a man kills his estranged wife to inherit her money. All such themes and motifs have been dealt with a multitude of times in the past, yet this movie presents the theme in a uniquely inventive and interesting manner such as you are rarely to encounter. It is quite an experience watching it and participating in all the small sub-plots, mysteries and deceptions that Palma has so carefully planned and executed.

The protagonist Jake Scully (portrayed by the wonderfully under-stated actor Craig Wasson who definitely deserved a much brighter career) is a down-on-his luck, out of work actor of B-films(The Vampire’s Kiss from which he is thrown out due to his inability to enact a coffin scene as he is claustrophobic) who finds out that his girlfriend is cheating on him. Finding himself suddenly without a home and an occupation, he befriends a fellow actor called Sam Bouchard who offers him a snazzy octagonal shaped apartment overlooking Hollywood Hills to house sit in. The house is plush and richly furnished and comes with a special attraction, namely a telescope with a view to die for !

The telescope is oriented in a manner that it affords full view into the window of an opposite house, where the occupant, a rich lady named Gloria Revelle, performs an erotic routine every night at exactly the same hour ( as Sam points out the novel pastime to Scully, he remarks about her performance-“like clockwork”). Dressed in lingerie, jewellery and high heels, the woman dances provocatively near the window though her face is hidden by the silhouette of the blinds. Scully becomes obsessed with Gloria and during one of his nocturnal ‘spying’, he observes a fierce looking man watching Gloria from an electrical repair spot nearby. The next day he sees the man (whom he describes as an “Indian”) follow Gloria to a shopping mall and he too follows her there, partly out of curiosity and partly out of concern for her. However it is clear that his intention is not only to screen Gloria from the pursuer, for even in his absence Jake begins to follow her everywhere, even watching as she changes her panties in a shop. As Gloria leaves the mall, she drops the panty that she just bought and Scully picks it up and stuffs it in his pocket.

She then goes to a Beach Terrace Motel to keep an appointment with someone and Jake also follows where he notices the “Indian” lurking around. Jake’s position is however awkward since he cannot warn Gloria about her pursuer without also disclosing  the fact that he has been peeping on her. But when the ‘Indian’ snatches Gloria’s purse from her, Jake chases him and enters a tunnel where his claustrophobia takes over and he freezes, unable to stop the thief. It is Gloria who rescues him from his predicament and also recovers her purse which has her house card missing. Jake tries to explain his situation and kisses Gloria who however runs away from him.

That very night, Gloria is killed in her apartment by the Indian fellow, and Jake reacts too slowly to save her, instead spending the most crucial moments watching from the telescope. He becomes the prime witness to her murder, but the police are inclined to view him with suspicion and disbelief as Scully chose to get a “peep on” rather than call in the police earlier when he saw the intruder or rush to the rescue himself. When the police chief finds Gloria’s panty in Jake’s pocket, he frames a theory that Jake was obsessed with Gloria and followed her, then had sex with her and kept the panty as a “momento”, later watching her die as he was more interesting in feeding his obsession that in helping (later when Scully discovers the truth, he calls the chief who taunts him by calling him “Hollywood’s busiest sex offender).

Afterwards, Scully watches an adult channel where he sees an actress called “Holly Body” perform a striptease in exactly the same manner as Gloria had earlier. Scully investigates by first visiting the studio that produced “Holly Does Hollywood” where the striptease was included and then getting Holly to converse with him on dance routine. She tells him that Sam Bouchard (she identifies him by voice) had paid her money and given her a wig so that she would dance near Gloria’s window for three nights, with the explanation that she had to arouse Sam’s friend who was a ‘peeper’.

In a flash, Scully recalls his association with Sam-about how he kept bumping into him in film auditions and how Sam had sized him up to be the perfect witness to a murder he was about to commit by noticing his weaknesses and flaws, especially his claustrophobia which caused Scully to completely become paralysed in fear. He also understands how Sam used him to provide an alibi for himself, by offering him the apartment and pretending to be out of town, even calling him a few times ostensibly from far away on the night of the murder. Holly was used as a bait to draw Scully into the game, by hooking him onto the telescope so that he would later watch the murder happen. He also figures that Sam is the estranged husband of Gloria who wanted to kill her and inherit her wealth. At this point, Sam realises that his game is up and abducts Holly in order to bury her next to the Hollywood reservoir. Jake follows and has a tussle with Sam in which he is pushed to the burial pit and experiences his claustrophobia again. As Sam taunts him from above, Jake tries to reconstruct the coffin scene of the movie from which he was fired and manages to recover from his catatonic state. He attacks Sam and meanwhile Sam’s dog rushes in and causes Sam to lose his balance and fall to his death in the reservoir nearby. When Holly gains consciousness, she rebuffs Jake’s offer of help, calling him a ‘sicko’ who deserves to be put away for life.

As the end credits roll however, it is obvious that Jake has more than managed to salvage his reputation by being re-hired as the vampire in “Vamire’s Kiss” and also becoming friendly with Holly who visits him on the movie sets.

Brian De Palma has cleverly drawn parallels between the web of lies and deceit in which Scully finds himself cornered, and in the superficial world of the film industry, be it the low budget productions or the pornographic film industry. In fact the name of the movie and its tagline also indicate the illusory order of things in the story where nothing that Scully witnesses or understands is the truth, as well as the ugly façade behind the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. One instance of the double standards is apparent when the director of “Vampire’s Kiss’ chucks Scully from the sets due to his claustrophobia and later re-hires him(probably due to the publicity he garners after he helps crack Gloria’s murder case) and comments that he was glad to have fired the other substitute, clearly displaying his absolute lack of commitment to actors. Also, when Holly is leaving Scully’s apartment in anger after being tricked by him, she mutters that the whole of Hollywood is full of freaky actors and masochistic directors.

Palma also builds the suspense around Scully’s failings on account of claustrophobia quite masterfully. In the scene where Jake recounts his earliest fear paralysis as a child and becomes agitated on remembering the time, his scenes are shown interchangeably with the intense face of Sam Bouchard as he is studying his weakness and “auditioning” him for a terrifying real life role. Also, in the tunnel scene where the Indian is running away with Gloria’s purse, Jake freezes halfway through while the camera zooms in and out slowly in a shaky and jarring angle so as to present the disorientation in Scully's mind and to further give the effect that it is drawing him inside and stretches on infinitely and thus that Scully has no means of escape from there.

Body Double blends irony and mystery/thriller in a commendable fashion- at one level it exposes the ugly world of the film industry where everyone indulges in back stabbing and bad mouthing the others at any given opportunity, where women are often objectified and where power equations between producers, directors and actors are highly unequal; at another level it stands out as a superb mystery with numerous red herrings and twists. Highly recommended watch !

WATCH ME WHEN I KILL

Original Title- IL GATTO DAGLI OCCHI DI GIADA (The Cat with the Jade Eyes), 1977, Italy

Taglines: When I go berserk...you're better off dead!

The giallo genre of Italian films originated with the yellow paperbacked mystery novels of the 20^th century which later gave way to movies with elements of mystery, suspense, the gory horror and often the supernatural.

Over the years, there became established certain trademarks and patterns of these films- for instance the assailant with black trench coat and fedora hat, black leather gloves and his signature switchblade, the suspenseful stalk and chase sequence, lurid subject matter with fashionable under-clad and promiscuous women as well as illicit affairs between the unfortunate victims, uncomfortably close ups of eyeballs and shots from the point of view of the murderer, numerous side plots and red herrings, washed out but smart cops and wacky reporters. Importantly, in most of these films, the killer would be a deranged anti-social person whose motives were convoluted and arose from ‘repressed memories’ such as childhood trauma or sexual abuse, which resulted in insanity in their adult lives. The ending would more often prove to be disappointing and confusing.

Also, most of these films did not have straightforward narratives, rather they involved continuous or intermittent flashbacks or side-by-side narrative on the killer’s perspective. Watch Me When I Kill is however one of the few giallo films which have a linear story structure and a surprisingly credible ending with the killer’s motive sufficiently identified.  The plot is simple- a killer is attacking and murdering middle aged well to do persons with apparently no pattern. The first victim is a pharmacist (Dezzan) who immediately before his death had a conversation with a friend called Esmeralda and told her about three threatening letters he has received. As he prepares to pack up for the day, he is hit on the head with a blunt object and then the unseen killer slits his throat. The protagonist of the film, Mara, a bar dancer, attempts to enter the shop to purchase aspirin, and hears the voice of the killer. Immediately thereafter, the dead body is discovered and the dancer becomes the object of the killer’s murderous pursuit. He attempts to kill her twice-once at her apartment and another time in her dressing room at the studio.

Mara’s boyfriend Lukas, a sound recording artist, becomes involved in finding the killer, both because of Mara as also because his neighbour Bozzi has received threatening calls with strange background music, which the killer deliberately puts in order to frighten the victims.

Lukus’s research leads him to the trial of a convicted and escaped prisoner Ferrante in whose murder trial, the pharmacist, Bozzi and the woman Esmeralda had served as jury members. But Ferrari turns out to be innocent and instead Lukas discovers that the three victims (both Esmeralada and Bozzi are also killed later- the first by getting her face scalded in an oven, and the other by strangulation with a metal shower hose) all belonged to the city of Pedova. He heads there and finds that all three were Nazi sympathisers who had betrayed a young Jew woman and her two children into the hands of the Nazis and that they had perished after staying in a concentration camp for a month. Bozzi was the person in whose house the unfortunate woman was taking shelter, Esmeralda was his mistress who brainwashed Bozzi and convinced him to give them over to the Nazis and the pharmacist Dezzan was the one who got them arrested by collaborating with the Nazis.

In the last scene of confrontation between Lukas the killer, it is revealed that the murderer is the judge in the murder trial of Ferrani, and his son, and that they are the surviving family of the betrayed woman. The judge reveals that it took him twenty long years to find the culprits and bring them to book and that his son had escaped arrest from the Nazis. The old man however shows remorse for the killings, agreeing with Lukas that it serves little purpose to take revenge after such a long gap when in fact he could have forgiven and moved on. His son, however, is intractable, and demands that Lukas and his girlfriend be killed too as they knew too much. Instead, the judge decides to put an end to the whole episode and shoots his son dead before killing himself.

The movie was released in DVD by VCI Entertainment in 2002 and 2007, and in the UK by Shameless Films in 2009.

RELENTLESS (1989)

Taglines- “When Buck Taylor comes to call, your number is up.”

“Killers aren't born. They're made. Judd Nelson is Buck Taylor. And Buck Taylor is...Relentless”

A taut action suspense film about a renegade cop reject (turned down from the Los Angeles Police Department on psychological grounds) who goes out to vent his vengeance by killing random members of the public. The killer is Arthur “Buck” Taylor (played in an incredibly creepy performance by Judd Nelson) who selects his prospective victims from a phone directory, the criteria being that any person with either “Arthur” or “Taylor” in their names makes it to his hit-list.

The killer leaves cryptic messages on his victims’ phones which all end with-“I have to kill you”. The voice and demeanour of the character “Buck” is so calm and unflustered that it belies the simmering frustration and anger that he feels, both at being turned down from LAPD and also importantly in disappointing his father in the high aspirations that he had held. Through flashbacks, we learn that Buck’s rejection is all the more shattering because his father, himself a LAPD detective killed on duty, had taught his son rigorous exercises/practices (including revolver rounds) in order to toughen and prepare him as a police officer. Buck regards his rejection as a slight to himself and the aspirations of his high achieving brutal father, who would have accepted nothing less than seeing his son as a competent policeman.

Arthur murders his victims in disturbing ways- by forcing them to participate in their own deaths, whether it is by making them run the knife on themselves or garroting themselves with piano wires. Then he leaves taunting notes for the baffled cops in which he challenges them to catch him.

Sam Dietz (Leo Rossi who later reprised his role as the spunky cop from New York in three direct-to-video sequels) is the newly transferred cop who immediately figures that the so called “random” murders are in fact connected and he drags his world-weary and cynical boss Malloy (acted by veteran Robert Loggia) on apprehending the sadistic serial killer.

However, the chase to find the killer becomes personal for Dietz when Malloy is murdered by Arthur (in retaliation for Malloy having publicly stated that the killer had a ‘sick twisted mind’) and later when Buck holds hostage his son and wife at their home.

Dietz discovers the hideout of the killer and realises that his family is in danger when he sees that the page of the phone-book containing his address is torn out and missing. He rushes home and manages to kill Buck, thus not only saving his family and avenging Malloy’s death, but also saving the public from his relentless killer pursuit.

It was nice for me to note that the script by Phil Alden Robinson actually gives shape to the background and motivations of the various characters, be it the dead-eyed Buck or Dietz with his outspoken and eccentric mannerisms. This is important because in most action flicks, the plot is given a go-by and there is no light thrown on the motives of the characters nor is any attempt made to endow them with human appeal; in fact these films tend to be a bunch of fight/action sequences without background or character driven stories. Also in this film, the music score and persistent sense of unease are unsettling enough to make the viewer sit up till the very end.

Overall, Relentless is a superbly done slick suspense thriller from the late 1980’s which has unfortunately not received as much attention or focus as some of the bigger budgeted offerings from the same period, such as the Terminator 1 and 2, Total Recall, Maniac Cop (directed by the same director William Lustig), First Blood etc. The movie is available on DVD as both single disc release and also in combination with its sequel which was released directly on video. It is also available by Warner Brothers DVD release as a four-film set which also comprises of Where Sleeping Dogs Lie, Scenes of the Crime and No Mercy.