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

Curse of the Undead: Yoma (1998)

“In the age of wars, innocent civilians’ blood sank into the earth.”  Ninja Hikage (Kenyu Horiuchi) and Marou (Kaneto Shiozawa) stand on a desolate battlefield as men strip the arrows from the scattered corpses.  Marou has a bit of an episode and runs off after smooshing the sodden ground between his fingers.  Shortly thereafter, the leader of their clan is murdered, and Hikage is dispatched to track down Marou, who may or may not have had something to do with it.  Meanwhile, all manner of demons (read: yoma) are appearing, feasting on human beings and trying to take over the world.  More or less.

Takashi Anno’s Curse of the Undead: Yoma (aka Blood Reign: Curse of the Yoma) is a two episode OVA (Original Video Animation) based on a manga by Kei Kusunoki (presented outwardly as one film for its video release [at least in America], though it’s really just the two programs [including opening and closing credits] shown back to back, but since I watched it, I’m counting it as one).  Consequently, I would bet my bottom dollar that this anime is a massive abbreviation of the original story (one of the things I always found fascinating about adaptations of manga, one of the most decompressed storytelling styles in the world, is whether they leave out large chunks of the story [usually things like exposition] or if they just go off in a direction inspired by the original; for example, Osamu Tezuka’s Akira manga is over two thousand pages long, while the anime is a little over two hours, but it’s still a superlative adaptation [it doesn’t hurt any that the original artist was also the film’s director]; I’m hard-pressed to say which version I prefer).  Marou is introduced with nary a word spoken, and from the way he acts at the opening, we might be led to think that he’s the protagonist.  Instead, he’s the villain, but even this isn’t made clear until much further down the road, even though it’s not treated like a big reveal.  We’re given glimpses of Marou and Hikage playing as children, but it’s always the same scene, and nothing of any consequence happens in it to either move the story forward or provide any insight.  This is especially confounding, because this scene is in heavy rotation in the film.  The anime leaps forward in chunks of time (hours, days, years), occasionally making light attempts at some sort of characterization, very little of which has any tangible impact.

The film is ostensibly about the bonds of friendship and how they are torn asunder.  Nevertheless, the relationship between Hikage and Marou has no substance to it; only hints at subtext.  As a result, it makes it difficult to invest any sort of emotion in the proceedings.  It doesn’t really help any that these two characters never have any meaty interactions after the chase is on, so outside of the constant flashbacks to the pair as kids, the only sense of weight in regards to their friendship comes in the form of Hikage’s obsession with finding Marou.  He is single-minded to the point of disobeying his boss, in fact.  Simultaneously, the relationship between Hikage and Aya (played by Hiromi Tsuru and Mina Tomunaga) is meant to bestow some alternative to the platonic love between Hikage and Marou.  I should state here (and you may have picked up the hint from the actor credits) that Aya is, technically, two characters.  The first is a simple villager with a death wish.  The second is a fellow (novice) ninja who follows along on Hikage’s journey (perhaps a death wish of another kind).  Both love Hikage in an immediate sense that never rang true for me, but when time is of the essence, best to cut to the chase, as it were.  Hikage is injured from an earlier fight with his friend, causing him to wear a bandage over his right eye for part of the story.  Likewise, the first Aya’s face is disfigured on the left side.  There is a circularity to this visual distinction that I quite like, but I won’t get into details for fear of spoiling anything.  The point is, everyone in the film is damaged (including Marou) by the war-ravaged world they inhabit, and the struggle to connect with another person is, not only the most important thing in their lives, but also the most damning.  That’s not to say there isn’t a kind of happy ending to the story, but it is more a silver cloud with a grey lining than the opposite.

This anime, to absolutely no one’s surprise, is loaded with elements of body horror.  Corpses are found disemboweled.  Throats are slit with a gush of arterial spray that would make Tomisaburo Wakayama green with envy.  Innards are shredded via oral application of Hikage’s nifty, Wolverine-esque claw gauntlet.  Yoma erupt through the flesh of their human forms to showcase the corrupt monstrosities hidden within.  And this is, pardon the pun, the real meat of the film.  The Japanese absolutely love showcasing grotesque, slimy, hirsute things tearing through and transmogrifying humanity down to its core, and this speaks of a commentary (intentional or not) on the perverting of human beings by the world they inhabit (which, by extension, we read as our world).  Very rarely are the protagonists in horror anime left unscathed by this condition, and Curse of the Undead: Yoma is no exception.  Here the criticism is on war and what it does to both the participants and the bystanders.  The war between humans becomes a war with yoma.  Still, the humans continue their own conflicts, even drawing the yoma into it directly, further degrading situations and characters already at base levels.  This theme is certainly nothing new in anime (or film in general), but it neither adds to nor detracts from this particular narrative.

Ultimately, and despite my criticisms, I found myself enjoying Curse of the Undead: Yoma.  It moves along at a nice enough clip, the creature designs are interesting if somewhat uninspired, and there’s action enough to spice up the basic story the filmmakers seem to go to great lengths to ignore.  This wouldn’t be a very good introduction to anime for some people, because it does have some of the more impenetrable anime elements non-Japanese viewers may find a bit too demanding.  That said, I found myself going with the flow, and the runtime passed by breezily.  I can think of worse ways to curse a film than damning it with faint praise (see what I did there?).

MVT:  There is a foreboding atmosphere at work in the film that maintains interest through the audience’s curiosity as to who will fall the hardest and how far they will drop?

Make or Break:  When the first big boss monster shows up and tells Hikage what the plot is (which is just as subject to change as a pair of socks), you’ll know whether the trip has been worth it for you or not.

Score: 6.5/10     

Night After Night After Night (1969)

A trench coat-wearing maniac stalks the Soho area of London, stabbing women with a switchblade.  Inspector Rowan (Gilbert Wynne) can’t catch a break in the case, though he’s keen to pin the murders on scuzzy lothario Pete (Donald Sumpter).  Meanwhile, Judge Lomax (Jack May) is having marital troubles, and his job may be getting to him (these may not be mutually exclusive).

Lindsay Shonteff’s (under the Lewis J. Force nom de guerre) Night After Night After Night (aka He Kills Night After Night After Night aka Night Slasher) is an intriguing, if slightly confused film.  It’s a sleazy sexploitation movie that indulges in the most prurient imagery (there’s a rather blatant shot of a stripper literally shaking her jugs at the camera) while stating that smut makes “perverts” into killers.  Simultaneously, it’s about how the system (and by extension, the murderer) condemns and punishes people for their sexuality while hypocritically desiring to satiate its own erotic passions.  Rowan and his wife Jenny (Linda Marlowe) are the most normal couple in the film.  They genuinely care about each other, and their relationship is fairly healthy.  Jenny is the only major character in the film who gets naked, and her sex scene with Rowan is loving, as are all of their interactions.  By contrast, Lomax and his wife Helena’s (Justine Lord) relationship is on the rocks.  They now sleep in separate bedrooms, and Helena even tries to reignite the old flame by “behav[ing] like a whore” (this consists of donning some black lingerie).  Lomax is completely disinterested, the daily grind of “remov[ing] cancer from society” having eroded his emotions down to stumps.  Pete states that he practically makes a career of “making birds.”  He flaunts his sexual exploits in Rowan’s face, telling him that he “banged” some woman in the park “and she liked it.”  He taunts Rowan about Jenny, teasing that he’ll visit her and give her what she needs (and what Rowan isn’t giving her [this is, of course, untrue; Pete’s just trying to, and succeeding in, getting a rise out of Rowan]).  Reducing Jenny to a receptacle for sex is tantamount to a criminal act in Rowan’s eyes (most especially since it’s also personal).  

Pete is odious in his lascivious, callous indifference towards his sexual partners and women in general, and it is this, above all else, that makes Rowan (and the audience) hate him to the point that he’s just dying to railroad Pete for the murders, guilty or not.  Rowan’s personal moral compass overrides his duty to uphold the law and follow procedures.  Likewise, Lomax despises the people who come before him in court, handing out the harshest sentences possible like a vengeful god, dispassionate toward extenuating circumstances.  He would rather send someone to jail for the maximum than get them hospitalized for mental issues or attempt to empathize in any way with them.  Lomax’s clerk Carter (Terry Scully) surreptitiously reads porn at work and frequents strip clubs.  Lomax admonishes him, “Overcome it, Carter, or it will destroy you.”  In Lomax’s mind, porn and rampant sexuality are a scourge, and it must be dealt with in the most severe way possible, but he stares at Jenny while dining at a restaurant, so we know that he still has sexual urges hidden somewhere.  He’s just tamping them down, because to consciously acknowledge them would be immoral.  The extremes of sexuality in the film (from unfettered to strangulated) are bad, morally and criminally, and the line between the two is portrayed as pretty slim.

And yet, the film does not hesitate to give the audience pulchritudinous female flesh at any given turn.  Aside from the aforementioned stripper and the sex scene between Jenny and Rowan, we get things like a gratuitous shot of the new undercover policewoman’s (Jacqueline Clarke) undies (go ahead and guess what she’s going undercover as).  We get an extended scene of Pete getting laid out in a field while some repressed girl (maybe just shy; Who the hell knows?  She’s creepy, regardless) watches.  She then offers herself to Pete, and he takes her up on it (talk about stamina).  We get extended closeups of breasts being groped and the like.  There’s a queasy complicity going on between the film and its target audience.  We want to watch the sex and nudity; we’re no different than the other men in the film.  Seeing these women killed because of the sexuality we desired to watch makes us participants in their deaths in a way that doesn’t happen as much in later slashers like the Friday the 13^th films and so forth.  The difference, I believe, is in the heavy moralizing the two main male characters engage in so vociferously.  This places a sobriety and a sense of audience admonishment on the film, deserved or not.  The constant sex thrown at us is the same thing that created creatures like Pete and Lomax and instigated Rowan to go on the rampage.  So, while we’re being fed it, we’re also being told that it’s bad for us, but it really isn’t, but it is.

Night After Night After Night is competently made, though its pacing is a bit odd.  Oftentimes, adjacent scenes simply butt up against one another with no connective tissue between them.  It can be a little jarring, but if anything, it actually adds to the film’s schizophrenic ambience, continuing, in a way, to describe its juxtaposition of prurience and prudishness.  Even while being distinctly British, there are Giallo elements at play, as well, making for something of interest to devotees of that genre.  The killer wears a black leather trench coat.  There are POV shots of him stalking and stabbing his victims.  There is the plain lurid quality so prevalent in Gialli, including the close tying of violence with sex and how this affects people mentally.  However, the film is simplistic to the point of being somewhat plain, and the finale meanders a bit more than it excites.  Nevertheless, it kept my ass in my seat, and I never truly felt bored by it.  Maybe I’m just another sex maniac.

MVT:  The grittiness of the film, augmented by its low budget aesthetics, is appealing, especially for those of us for whom this is a big part of the attraction to films like this.

Make or Break:  There’s a character’s death rather early on that is not only surprising, but it’s also surprisingly well-staged, and it sends the story in a different direction than you might have initially expected.

Score: 6.75/10