Okay, so: re Trouble Every Day, I don't think it should ever have been programmed as a "vampire" film per se--it's a werewolf film at best, or maybe a zombie variant, a maenad/cannibal film primarily.
I would have had no difficulty with it in a werewolf marathon. It would have been a sort of Jacobean form of the werewolf, where the physicality of the transformation is less important than the compulsive appetite, but it would at least have felt in key with the surrounding archetype. No wonder I thought of Cat People.
I also admit to the lure of its "film maudit" status, its utter inaccessibility. At one point, I could only find it as a decayed videotape through the Suspect Video mothership store; I finally had to order it on expensive DVD from Japan. At the time it came out, if was also heralded as something you couldn't unsee, something you shouldn't see, or want to see. That's my jam, as we all know, so I was predisposed to cut it a lot of slack.
Heh. It definitely isn't something I'm sorry to have seen. And at least someone at the HFA feels the same way as you do.
It's been a while since I've seen it--I know Core's imprisonment ends in fire, like Jane Eyre, but I can't remember much else about it.
We're led to expect something dramatic when Shane and Coré finally meet again; there was an implication of personal as well as professional history between them and of course they are, to our knowledge, the only two of their kind in the world. (The details of the failed research project were hazy, but it seemed to have been the ethically borderline kind where the experimenters were ther own subjects.) By the time he finds her, she has already fucked and partly eaten one of the teenage boys who broke into her house and freed her from her freshly barricaded room; she's been playing with matches and the house is now on fire, very Bertha Mason-style. It is not possible to tell from their reunion whether she recognizes Shane as himself or just as male meat: they are seen embracing, but when she begins to nuzzle and snap at him and fight him when he doesn't let her bite, he breaks her neck and leaves her for the flames. Léo arrives just too late to see Shane, but not too late to take in the sight of his dead wife in their burning house, and neither rushthatspeaks nor I were sure that he actually left instead of going down with his laboratory like a mad scientist of the old school. That is not the film's finale; there's at least another half-hour, much of which is taken up with Shane's decision to stalk, rape, and consume the chambermaid. He really seems to think he can compartmentalize his hungers. Seriously, dude, have you never seen a vampire love story? Or werewolf? Or even serial killer?
Oh, my God, this is part of Peeping Tom (1960). I have to leave the house, but please remind me to say something when I get back!
But it was definitely made to be unsatisfying, so I'm not surprised that you found it so.
Honestly, it is extremely useful to hear that the inability to make the film resolve wasn't a failure of comprehension on my part. It felt like there were pieces missing; there were. Now I can decide whether I like it as an intended effect or not, but at least I know I was seeing what I was meant to see. Part of the problem I was having all along was the feeling that I wasn't. Thank you.
no subject
I would have had no difficulty with it in a werewolf marathon. It would have been a sort of Jacobean form of the werewolf, where the physicality of the transformation is less important than the compulsive appetite, but it would at least have felt in key with the surrounding archetype. No wonder I thought of Cat People.
I also admit to the lure of its "film maudit" status, its utter inaccessibility. At one point, I could only find it as a decayed videotape through the Suspect Video mothership store; I finally had to order it on expensive DVD from Japan. At the time it came out, if was also heralded as something you couldn't unsee, something you shouldn't see, or want to see. That's my jam, as we all know, so I was predisposed to cut it a lot of slack.
Heh. It definitely isn't something I'm sorry to have seen. And at least someone at the HFA feels the same way as you do.
It's been a while since I've seen it--I know Core's imprisonment ends in fire, like Jane Eyre, but I can't remember much else about it.
We're led to expect something dramatic when Shane and Coré finally meet again; there was an implication of personal as well as professional history between them and of course they are, to our knowledge, the only two of their kind in the world. (The details of the failed research project were hazy, but it seemed to have been the ethically borderline kind where the experimenters were ther own subjects.) By the time he finds her, she has already fucked and partly eaten one of the teenage boys who broke into her house and freed her from her freshly barricaded room; she's been playing with matches and the house is now on fire, very Bertha Mason-style. It is not possible to tell from their reunion whether she recognizes Shane as himself or just as male meat: they are seen embracing, but when she begins to nuzzle and snap at him and fight him when he doesn't let her bite, he breaks her neck and leaves her for the flames. Léo arrives just too late to see Shane, but not too late to take in the sight of his dead wife in their burning house, and neither
Oh, my God, this is part of Peeping Tom (1960). I have to leave the house, but please remind me to say something when I get back!
But it was definitely made to be unsatisfying, so I'm not surprised that you found it so.
Honestly, it is extremely useful to hear that the inability to make the film resolve wasn't a failure of comprehension on my part. It felt like there were pieces missing; there were. Now I can decide whether I like it as an intended effect or not, but at least I know I was seeing what I was meant to see. Part of the problem I was having all along was the feeling that I wasn't. Thank you.