Simon, King of the Witches: (1971. dir: Bruce Kessler) This, it turns out, is not a horror film at all. Simon is a hipster at the turn of the Aquarian Age. He lives in a storm drain, and so goes for walks during rainstorms. He makes a living selling charms and talismans to rich, young ne'er-do-wells, but he is a true magus, and his continuing work is to find his way into the realm of the gods, not as a supplicant, but as an equal.
The extraordinary thing about this low-budget (shot in three weeks) film is that it is so entirely free of any kind of formula. It rose up from the craziness that is Hollywood at a time when everything was chaos, and nobody really knew what would sell, so interference by the moneymen was at an all-time low. Ostensibly written by a soi-disant magus, its magicks are rooted in real-life lore (although Simon commands a ridiculously high rate of success in his spells and curses), unlike the
Buffy/
Harry Potter fluff which passes these days.
Andrew Prine (habitue of Westerns, horror films, and television across several decades) imbues his line readings with a necessary intelligence, --a chore, since much of it is written from so esoteric a perspective (and with sufficient sixties-bound lingo) that a lesser man at a less adventurous time might balk at the task. His presence is also sufficiently earthy to ground the story, lending credence to its terrestrial humour (a love-charm which results in a perpetual erection; a ceremony by a rival witch, played by Warhol posse-member Ultra Violet, involving a goat licking a human skull).
It's not scary, and it's not trying to be. The ending is interesting: it's got a cleverly psychedelic, pre-climactic scene in which Simon experiences the vision which foretells the outcome. Actually, that IS the climactic scene; the realization of it is only denouement.
*SPOILER ALERT*
Summer's Moon: (2009. dir: Lee Demarbre) The first hour is dreadful, a clunky re-imagining of
the Collector. In fact, this movie can be described by other movies whose parts it resembles (some
Frailty, some
Killer Joe energy), as it never finds its own particular cohesion or personality. Tough, lovely Summer (Ashley Greene) has run away from home to find her father, whom she's never met. Once in the old man's hometown, she hooks up with a charmer who, after the romantic evening, chains her up in his "garden" alongside another fast-fading beauty and a collection of high-cheekboned skulls. (Mom helps out with his hobby, by the way, because she's in his sexual thrall.) It's all fairly cockamamie until about an hour or so into the proceedings when Stephen McHattie shows up, the Grand Old Patriarch of this Serial Killer Clan. McHattie's an actor with the kind of glorious kick that brings a struggling plot into zestful life, but, alas, even he is not enough to save the thing. And it's not that the other actors are bad; they're not. They're just stuck in a contrived situation which never springs to life.
All the Boys Love Mandy Lane: (2006. dir: Jonathan Levine) This is the one where the teenagers go to party at a remote location and get bloodily knocked off, one by one, in retribution for their degeneracy. Or, possibly, for wanting and/or envying Mandy Lane, the nice girl who goes along with them.
Yeah, you think you've seen it before, but this has better production values, better acting (Amber Heard and the guy from
Hell on Wheels), a good twist, and, oddest of all, a decent script, which leaves things unspoken and gives us high school characters believable enough that it's hard to hang around with them. Like lovely young girls with body issues that make them so vulnerable they feel they have to do anything to fit in (give a blowjob to restore a boy's wounded vanity, shave their pubes, jack a guy off in the back seat, dull the agony with drugs). It's almost painful to watch, and then they get killed for it. There's a melancholy to it.
