Seven Notes in Black (1977)

I don’t know that I believe in psychics.  Brushing aside any of the science (or pseudoscience) about the human brain and how much of it is actually “tapped into” or not in that regard or whether that’s all just bullshit fueled by fantastic fiction (surely not), I’m just unsure on a core, cynical level that there are folks who can access some nebulous spirit world or glimpse into the future simply with the power of their mind.  But like Fox Mulder, I want to believe, and this is one of the many struggles that goes on daily between my rational and irrational mind.  I want to believe in things like this, because I want to believe that the world isn’t as drably mundane as it actually is.  By that same token, I’ve never personally encountered any convincing evidence to prove the converse (to be fair, it takes a lot to convince me).  

Maybe it goes back to my love of Godzilla films and Eiji Tsuburaya’s philosophy of having a sense of wonder about the world and wanting to pass this on to others through his work.  I mean, if things like psychics or Bigfoot or UFOs don’t exist, all that leaves is a workaday existence filled with the crushing realities of life (I know, I’m starting to get depressing here).  Contrarily, these things really probably shouldn’t be proven one way or the other, because then they would become as unremarkable as everything else we face daily.  In some ways, this is the same function that film bestows.  Cinema provides us with lives less ordinary, and we live in these narratives for a time, staving off the real world and all its problems, even as it reflects and/or addresses them.  My reasoning on all of this may read as murky to you, but that’s only because it’s murky to me (I’m notoriously bad at being black or white on a lot of things; the curse of a semi-open mind).  So I’m okay (and we, as an audience, are okay) with investing in the possibility that Virginia Ducci (Jennifer O’Neill) can see a murder she wasn’t actually present for in Lucio Fulci’s Seven Notes in Black (aka The Psychic aka Sette Note in Nero aka Death Tolls Seven Times).  I mean, why watch a film about a psychic, otherwise?

When she was just a young girl, Virginia “saw” her mother’s death while she was miles and miles away. Now an adult, Virginia, housewife of the wealthy Francesco Ducci (Gianni Garko), suddenly begins to have visions again, this time of a murder.  Obsessed with and plagued by her second sight, she pushes on in her investigation, placing herself in mortal peril.

Time in this film is fragmented in much the same way that reality is fragmented in other Fulci films (in fact, I would argue they essentially are the same).  We are constantly taken from the linear present to the murder, which is never presented in a straight line.  We get a shot of a smashed mirror, a shot of a yellow (giallo) cigarette in a blue ashtray, a shot of a man’s feet dragging across a carpet, etcetera.  This continuously happens to Virginia throughout the film, and it is usually accompanied by a quick zoom into her eyes (a form of Fulci’s signature ocular trauma motif?).  In other words, the camera attacks her, and the result is a disorientating reordering of the real world.  In this sense, Virginia is brought into Hell (or a hell), similar to that which bursts forth through the portal under the hotel in The Beyond and so forth, the difference here being that a person is the gateway rather than a place, and she is drawn through her mind to this Hell rather than this Hell being drawn through a door to us.  Another contrast is that Virginia’s reality is a knot ceaselessly being untangled, whereas in The Beyond, reality is being twisted, though both stories will eventually still make some sort of sense in their own way (one is just more literal than the other, arguably).

Also fitting with Fulci’s other work, Seven Notes in Black is a fatalistic film (as films about psychics tend to be).  Virginia has witnessed something, and she must follow the line of it to the bitter end.  There’s no getting around it, because this is the only way for her to unburden herself of her visions (at least for now).  Plus, there is the aspect that what’s coming down the pike is inexorable, despite attempts to avoid it.  The segments have to be pieced together in the proper sequence for order to be reinstated (whether or not this reinstated order is better or worse than what came before it is debatable).  Yet, as the pieces fall into place, Virginia understands (as do we) that she is following a preordained narrative; she just didn’t realize it at first.  Her free will, then, is robbed from her, for the most part.  The only question left open is whether or not she will survive (you can argue that her free will kicks in here, but previous evidence makes that claim suspect), and this provides the tension of the film.  Just because you can see into another time or across continents, doesn’t mean you can halt the universe’s forward movement.  There is still cause and effect, but Virginia’s agency is limited in its influence on them.

From what I’ve seen of Fulci’s filmography, I feel fairly confident stating that Seven Notes in Black is not only his most coherent film, but it’s also his most accomplished (I’m sure some would contend that Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is the winner in the latter category).  The film stays on point from start to finish.  It builds its story from disparate elements, and said story remains unambiguous despite the ambiguity upon which it’s constructed.  There is also a lack of gore to be found here.  The most ludicrous visual we get is of a dummy having its plastic head bashed repeatedly off a cliff side (this was pretty amusing, all things considered, and proof that you can take the man out of the outrageousness, but you can’t take the outrageousness out of the man; not completely).  The film’s weakest point, ironically enough, is O’Neill.  She’s certainly attractive enough, and can pull off being anxious, but she has no real presence onscreen, otherwise.  Thankfully, Fulci is enough of a visual stylist to keep things interesting.  It’s surprising to me that the filmmaker doesn’t get more respect because of work like this (maybe because it was so infrequent in his oeuvre), but he deserves it, as does this film.

MVT:  Fulci shows some real restraint here, proving that ridiculous gore wasn’t the only thing he could do very well when given the chance.

Make or Break:  The prologue sets up the premise nicely, and it’s as enigmatic as it is audacious.

Score: 7/10

The Force of Evil (1977)

**SPOILERS**

William Conrad’s stentorian, gravel-and-whiskey voice intones, “In everyone, it is said, there is a spark of the divine.”  The POV camera pulls up on a traffic accident, and our omniscient narrator opines that this spark can as easily be a force of good as it can a (dun Dun DUUNNN!) force of evil.  We cut to Dr. Yale Carrington (Lloyd Bridges), fresh out of surgery, and regretting (in a “can’t see the forest for the trees” moment) that they had to amputate a limb (NOTE: None of this has any bearing on the rest of the film).  Returning to his office, he is met by Teddy Jakes (William Watson), fresh out of jail for rape and murder, who wants his old job in the hospital crematorium back.  After being denied (I suspect he never actually wanted to get re-hired, don’t you?), Teddy sets forth on a campaign of terrorism and revenge against Yale and his family.

Richard Lang’s The Force of Evil is a television movie that was aired on the NBC network under the banner of Quinn Martin’s Tales of the Unexpected, an anthology series of eight programs that focused on genre stories, primarily of the horror/science fiction bent.  Of the eight, this is the only one that was feature length.  At this time in America, violence was a big seller (honestly, though, was it ever not?), but the restrictions on television producers forced them to be roundabout in its on-air depictions.   Today, a story like this would be too tame for even the most common episode of something like Law & Order or Criminal Minds.  For as much as it can, this film fulfills the promise of violence, just in a more suggestive (and I would argue more effective) manner.  Television was also taking chances with stories that, while still being formulaic and imitative of their big budget brethren, were still somewhat unconventional in their content.  

The Force of Evil is, for all intents and purposes, a remake of 1962’s Cape Fear.  A psychopath menaces a family as an act of vengeance, and the family is pushed to extremes to end the threat.  Teddy is untouchable by the law (up to a point), and like Max Cady, is bold and smug at every turn (Teddy also has a habit of smacking his chewing gum which only augments his easygoing arrogance, and he is positively gleeful when he reminds Yale that he’s a rapist, which he does often).  Yale is frustrated by the system (the same one that he aided in getting Teddy incarcerated, ironically), and has to go outside it to save his loved ones.  Ostensibly “good” people are forced to do bad in order to combat malevolence.  They are brought down to the level of Jakes, because that primal arena is the only one in which he can be combatted and defeated.  It’s so similar to J. Lee Thompson’s film, in fact, that there is even a climactic confrontation on a houseboat.  

The twist in Lang’s film is that Teddy Jakes is implied as being the literal embodiment of the title’s namesake.  Diabetic Teddy’s insulin is spiked by Yale (why we’re not shown the scene of him sneaking into Teddy’s room to do it is a mystery, since the suspense of such a sequence could have worked liked gangbusters), and his dead body (we’re also cleverly never shown Yale verifying this) is dumped down an old well (the single moment of the film I remembered from my youth, and the impetus for my rewatching of it for this review, is when they haul the body back up) by Yale and wife Maggie (Pat Crowley).  But Teddy returns and ups the ante on the Carringtons.  After being drowned by Yale’s own hands, Teddy’s body disappears.  Further is the insinuation that young Cindy Carrington (Eve Plumb) has a quasi-psychic rapport with Jakes or maybe just psychic abilities in general.  She has a dream about Teddy throwing an amputated leg into a ring of fire, though she doesn’t meet him until later (and somehow doesn’t recognize him), and doesn’t  know anything about his former job and seamy background.  But these supernatural elements are never addressed explicitly.  They are simply presented as they happen and then are left there for the audience to decide.  This is the sort of storytelling I enjoy, because the lack of confirmation enhances the uneasy feeling of the narrative.  The explanations could be extraordinary or mundane, and we’re credited with enough brainpower to not need to have the answers spoonfed to us (another difference between television programming then and now, in my opinion [yes, there are and will always be exceptions to this, but let’s not nitpick too much, shall we?]).

The filmmakers also keep the viewer off-kilter through the cinematography.  Much of the film is shot at low angles, making the characters loom in the frame and creating a sinister atmosphere.  Ultra-wide fisheye lenses are also employed, further emphasizing the unsettled feel of the world these character inhabit (and in which, oftentimes, massive hands are all but punched out of the screen into the audience’s eyes, a sly form of violent metaphor by “invading” the viewer’s space).  A few split diopter shots add to the ambience, as well (has that murky middle ground in this type of shot ever been used as anything other than a hothouse for suspense to blossom?  I would suggest no).

As with the intimation of the paranormal, and knowing the boundaries of television standards on violence, the film’s producers filled every moment of The Force of Evil with (sometimes overwrought) tension, even between characters who supposedly care about each other.  Yale goes to his sheriff brother Floyd (John Anderson) for help, and here we learn that the older brother resents the success of his younger, doctor sibling.  Their exchanges are terse and loaded with verbal jabs at each other.  Yale seems to merely tolerate his son and daughter, and his relationship with his wife feels like it’s just dying to explode in emotional violence at any minute.  

After explaining to Maggie that Teddy is “a sick man,” she wants him dead (“I’ve never been this close to evil before”), and that’s before Teddy freaks her out by sending her a box with an amputated arm wearing a ring similar to that of her son John’s (William Kirby Cullen).  This scene is crucial for this film to work, for two reasons.  One, it makes the danger very, very real while wringing every ounce of anxiety out of the situation.  Two, it is returned to at the film’s end as a final sting that manages to be both open-ended and also fittingly grim and terrifying.  While the high-strung disquiet of the film does go a little into the area of histrionics at times, I found it works more often than not, and it manages to do what its producers wanted it to: namely, keep the watchers’ asses in their seats through the commercials.  Granted, I watched it sans commercials, but I don’t think I would have moved even if there had been any. 

MVT:  Lang and company do a marvelous job creating and maintaining the tension of the film from its opening prologue to its chilling denouement.  

Make or Break:  I love the ending minute or two of the film.  I can’t say that the narration over it works as well as the actual moment, but I believe it to be a wonderful summation and a bit of punctuation on a story that’s both familiar and a little offbeat.

Score: 6.75/10           

The Nesting (1980)

I hate the outdoors. No, wait, let me restate that. I loathe the outdoors. Don't misunderstand me, I find nature to be wonderful to look at. I recognize its importance in the ecological balance of the planet. I like animals. But I don't like being out in nature. I used to, when I was young and even into early adulthood. But I think that my love for the woods ended around the same time I stopped imbibing large quantities of hard liquor on a regular basis (the prospect of waking up on a clump of odd-smelling dirt had lost its shine, somehow). Now mosquitoes and flying, blood-sucking pests of every stripe find me to be something of a delicacy. I can cover myself head-to-toe in Deet-formulated repellants, but I think to insects (in relation to me, at any rate) it's like A-1 on a steak. I burn in minute amounts of sunlight. Some would say that's because I don't go outside to begin with. I would say that's one of the reasons I don't go outside. Heat is not my friend, and most people who want to be out in the woods for any length of time typically want to do so on nice, muggy, sweltering days. I start sweating at about sixty-five degrees and up. I don't begrudge anyone their enjoyment of all things out-of-doors; I simply don't partake in them. I certainly do not suffer from agoraphobia like Robin Groves' character in Armand Weston's The Nesting (aka Massacre Mansion, aka Phobia). I just prefer air-conditioning. 

Suffering from the aforementioned malady, author Lauren Cochran (Groves) can hardly make it out of her New York City apartment for more than a few minutes at a time, and she has a horrible (but not too horrible) fear of men. Trying everything from New Age meditation to seeing a shrink, Dr. Webb (Patrick Farrelly), Lauren decides that she needs to get out of the city to reduce her stress level. Accompanied by her unrequited would-be-suitor, Mark (Christopher Loomis), Lauren comes upon a rundown mansion, which she has never seen before, but she described vividly in her titular novel. She convinces weird old coot, Colonel LeBrun (John Carradine), and his physicist son, Daniel (Michael David Lally), to rent the place to her. Soon thereafter, Lauren has visions of "painted ladies" and phantoms moving about the place, and strange, deadly occurrences start taking place.

The late Armand Weston was a writer/director of porn movies before he made his only attempt at a "legit" film with this piece (according to IMDB, he was fired from Dawn Of The Mummy). And while the film does bear some mild adult influences (the brothel scenes, Lauren's self-caressing scene, the obligatory love scene, etcetera), it is also indicative of the adult industry of the time. By that I mean it is not strictly utilitarian in its technical aspects. The porn directors of the 1970s were often people trying to make real movies that happened to contain scenes of explicit sex in them. In this film, there are two ways that this mindset is in evidence. The first is in Weston's depiction of Lauren's ailment. When she goes outside and has an anxiety attack, he uses POV handheld camerawork with a fish-eye lens to accentuate the disorientation and menace felt by the character. The second is when Lauren imagines an out-of-body experience. Weston here employs a double-exposed ghost image of Lauren rising up from her prone physical form and moving about. It's an old school technique, but it is effective, and it helps the audience form some type of bond with the lead character (though this bond is tenuous and will be undone by the film itself later).

Films have utilized the defective lead/POV character for years. Just look at Harry Caul in The Conversation, the eponymous Barton Fink, or Mabel Longhetti of A Woman Under The Influence. What they do, essentially, is provide the story with an unreliable narrator, so that the audience can freely question almost everything it sees and hears; Was there a dead body in the truck, or was it all in her mind? You get the idea. For the sort of supernatural mystery that Weston has set-up here, it starts off on the right foot. Unfortunately, he also makes the mistake of not leaving the mystery to play out in the viewer's imagination (and, thus, question the film's reality). He explicitly answers the question of whether or not the house is haunted with a resounding "yes," which robs the story of much of its potential impact. When handyman, Frank (Bill Rowley), starts floating awkwardly in the middle of the living room, any sense of nuance goes out the window. There is a reason why Robert Wise didn't show anything unequivocally in his superlative The Haunting, and Weston would have done well to learn from that veteran director's work.

The film also deals with the divide between the heart and the mind through the supernatural elements. Lauren's psychiatrist believes that she is making connections in her mind that don't exist. Daniel believes in the possibility of the unknown, but his faith in science is stronger. By contrast, Lauren is an artist (a tortured one, to be sure) and accepts, even runs toward the embrace of the otherworldly. The first time she sees the house, she has to rent it. She follows furtive specters, no matter where they lead her (and they lead her to some odd places). Since we see all of the things happening to and around Lauren (even when she does not witness them directly), we side with her, and consequently we side with emotion. Yet again, the filmmakers try to marry the two together by the time the finale rolls around in a confused, rather hamfisted way. And it's this mash-up of the two that ultimately makes the film so unsatisfying. Rather than choose one side or the other (and actually develop it), they opt for both, and the audience therefore cares about neither. What's worse is that this attempted merger comes so late in the film, it feels like some egregious afterthought to the flat, blasé, exposition-laden info-dump that makes up the film's ending. Much like the matryoshka dolls the filmmakers almost certainly had in mind as a clever metaphor for the film's themes (nesting, get it?), it instead mirrors the observer's enjoyment, as each piece of the film opens to reveal smaller and smaller ideas, until there's not much left at all.

MVT: The best thing the filmmakers did for the film was trying to imbue it with a Southern Gothic feel, and it works when they care enough to try maintaining it. They just didn't try maintaining it for the entire runtime.

Make Or Break: The GGTMCers out there who enjoy watching unbelievably bad cinematic moments will revel in the scene where Lauren meets the slovenly Abner Wells (David Tabor, winner of this week's BEM Award). Seeing him pound on a car's windshield, his face a caricatured grimace, and his pants split down the crack of his ass is a moment you won't soon forget (no matter how much you'd like to).

Score: 5.75/10

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