Hey, everyone - Bob here, for the annual test of my friendship with Al.
This year, he's given me an odd little film: Daughter of Horror.
Daughter of Horror, by my understanding, is a re-release of the 1955 film Dementia, which was originally going to be released in 1953 but was banned by the New York State Film Board.
Al will probably kill me if I don't also mention that this film was also featured in the 1958 film The Blob (Crisis averted then).
It was also purchased, re-edited, and re-released with added narration.
Notably, the narration - per Wikipedia, anyway - was done by Ed McMahon. Yes, that Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson's buddy on The Tonight Show. The re-release date is unclear - the actual film's page claims it was re-released in 1957, but Ed McMahon's page claims 1970.
No offense to Ed McMahon, who does a stellar job with the actual voiceover work for the narration, but the addition of narration was, in general, a really bad idea that takes a weird but intriguing film and basically spells out what's happening to make sure you don't miss details that were perfectly well presented to begin with.
Now, if they'd wanted to add narration to Hard to Be a God, that I would've liked!
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| Literal first thing you see. This...felt like a bad sign. |
However, this is kind of a dreamlike, experimental film, so despite the above, there's some parts you can still interpret multiple ways.
The film is also mostly a silent film, with no dialogue whatsoever except for the narration added to this version, and only a few bits of other vocalizations - wordless laughter and crying. Other than that, you're just in the company of the soundtrack for the rest of the film. This, obviously, contributes to the dreamlike atmosphere and opens events to interpretation, as for the most part you have to judge what's happening purely based on visuals.
To be clear, I don't mean "silent film" as in "there is dialogue but it appears as text on screen." I mean that there's no dialogue whatsoever in any form.
In any case, in brief, here's the concept: The movie follows one night in the life of a woman who appears to be insane, suffering from hallucinations and unsettling behaviors. It is less a straight plot than a look at madness, and it is unclear how much or how little of the film actually happens.
Some scenes are blatantly dreams or hallucinations (especially when the narrator just outright says so like we can't figure it out), while others may have happened, or may be her imaginings.
I'll briefly summarize what appears to occur. Obviously, spoiler warning...such as it is. Seriously, though - if anything that I said above sounded interesting, and you're willing to deal with a short-but-slow film with some too-blatant narration to see what it's about, you may wish to watch the film before reading anything below as it probably plays better going in with less knowledge.
Otherwise, carry on.
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| Oh no, I'm totally in the same shot as this wave! Please ignore how you can see it through my head! |
The woman has a dream about drowning, then wakes, takes a switchblade, and goes out on the town. She encounters various people, is attacked by a drunk and rescued by a cop who beats the drunk to death, and is accosted by a man who gets her to come with him to a rich man he appears to work for.
She goes out for a night on the town with the rich man, flashes back to when she killed her drunk and abusive father for killing her mother (an adulteress), then is largely ignored by the rich man at home until he comes over to try to kiss her (apparently treating her like a prostitute), at which point she stabs him. He grabs her necklace and plummets out the window, and she flees, seen by multiple people, and tries to get it back from his corpse, but it's holding on too tightly so she uses her switchblade to cut his hand off and takes both, then hides them in a flower seller's basket.
Then, she flees from the pursuing police into a nightclub (which we are blatantly told is a hallucination), until she is caught and hallucinates everyone knowing what she did, including her victim laughing at her. Then she wakes up in bed...but sees the hand and pendant in her dresser.
You'll notice that that's not really a ton of plot. Indeed, this is a fairly short film, just shy of an hour long. I'd argue it could've been even shorter, as there's a lot of scenes or shots that just drag on for a very long time - some for stylistic reasons, but still. I think you could cut this down by a good twenty minutes and not lose much of anything.
It just takes far too long to get to things sometimes, especially when it is obvious what's going to happen - for instance, it's about twenty minutes of the runtime between her meeting the rich man and her killing the rich man, and it's pretty obvious from the first second of their time together that that's where this is going. They just drag it out over several scenes of them in the car, attending a restaurant, attending a club, and spending time at his (very fancy) apartment. It just keeps going.
We even watch the rich guy eating chicken wings for two thirds of eternity.
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| I'm just as bored by this as you are, lady. |
That said...it's still quite an interesting film. The acting is all terrifically strange in just the right way for this. The lead, Adrienne Barrett, does a particularly tremendous job of acting just a bit off - her reactions to people feel just slightly unsettling, she smiles at weird times and in strange manner, she holds her gaze on things for just a few seconds too long, that sort of thing.
Her late-film freakouts are also terrific. She's really very good in the role and holds the viewer's attention well, which is a good thing since she's in the vast majority of shots in the film and has to communicate a great deal through just expression and movement.
She's a major contributor in the film setting its mood and atmosphere extremely well.
The cinematography is also worthy of praise - there's a lot of great shots in this film that set a dark and twisted atmosphere and make things feel just a bit wrong, a bit confused and unreal. It makes excellent use of light and shadow, and of set design, to communicate that the world is not quite being seen truthfully and to add a touch of intimidation and danger to just about every moment.
No shot feels like it's taking place in true safety - it either feels actively frightening, at least unsettling, or just confused and wrong, but all clearly intentionally so.
The film also makes use of a lot of visual symbolism - for instance, the police detective who keeps showing up throughout the film in various places, sometimes in direct pursuit of the lead and sometimes just seemingly in the same place, is the same actor who plays the lead's alcoholic and abusive father that she killed in her past - a literal representation of her past haunting her constantly. (It would be perhaps more impactful if that fact wasn't lampshaded so blatantly by the narration midway through, which outright states: "...behind you, the policeman with the face of your father, the face of your first victim, pursuing you relentlessly in your haunted brain...")
Seriously, the narration really screws with this film. Sorry, Ed. It isn't as bad as Scared to Death, but it just feels like it was added because people didn't feel like the original film was interpretable, in which case...maybe just don't re-release it?
The whole point of this film is to be weird and make you second-guess what you are seeing and figure out what it means - adding something that just tells you what it means kind of invalidates the movie as a whole.
I also really loved how they presented the flashback to the death of her parents - it's a little on the nose, but a really fun and artistic presentation. Rather than flashing back to her childhood home, the film flashes to a graveyard, where a tall man in a suit with a mask on shows her visions of her parents and their deaths...which are done very stage style by just adding home props and furniture to the graveyard itself.
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| Slender Man version 0.12a? |
The mother even falls dead right in front of the tombstone reading "Mother," which is admittedly kind of direct but does get the point across. Credit to them for the overall sequence, which was a visually interesting and unusual way of presenting the concept.
Really, that's the way of things with this film - it has a lot of visually interesting, creative presentation, marred by a longer-than-necessary runtime (even for its short length), overly blatant narration, and a few outright silly bits that could perhaps be excused as representations of the lead's madness, but really are probably artifacts of the time or just some poor filmmaking creeping in. Most notable for that is the bit involving her trying to get her pendant back from the rich man's corpse: When we first see it held in his hand, it's held very loosely, but when she goes to take it, it is gripping the pendant tight, so she has to cut the hand off. With a switchblade. Which seems difficult, and likely to leave even more evidence on the area and your person than just leaving the pendant.
By the way, maybe don't cut off the whole hand but just a finger or two to get the pendant? Not that I've thought about this sort of thing.
Then, she has an entire chase sequence through town, keeping the hand on her person the whole time, and somehow has no blood whatsoever on her.
Again, you could argue that it's a hallucination thing, but...really, I think it might be more an artifact of this being a 1950s film and not wanting / being allowed to show much gore. There is a bit of blood on the mother's hand in her death scene, but not much beyond that.
It doesn't matter much to the plot anyway since some or all of that may not even be happening, but still.
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| Cool artistic "followed by spotlight" shots, though. |
Otherwise, the only remaining major criticism I have to present is the soundtrack, which is just aggressively dreamlike and ethereal in a way that starts out interesting and quickly becomes annoying, largely because the same sequence of notes repeats over and over and over and over in the film with very little variation for most of its runtime. It sounds like the theme they'd use for strange and fascinating parts of alien planets in the original Star Trek - high, airy female singer singing wordlessly, ascending and descending note runs, that sort of thing.
It's good!
Until you hear it for nearly an hour straight, broken only by a big band number late film. It's the voice version of the soundtracks to Rollergator or Mesa of the Lost Women.
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| Bruno VeSota, whose performance here strangely reminded me of Orson Welles' in The Trial. |
Honestly, there's more I could say, but I kind of want to leave it there. This is not a bad film, though I suspect the original version might have been superior - I'm not sure what other than the narration (which was a bad choice) was adjusted in this one, so it's possible this improved it in some ways and hurt it in others, or that is was just hurt and not improved at all.
Still, it's an interesting concept, just presented in a way that's lengthier than it needs to be and with some awkwardness and confusion that can't always be excused as just the film portraying madness. It's a strong attempt at its concept and even in its current state, leaves some things just open to interpretation enough to be an intriguing watch - just be ready for a slow pace and some poor presentation choices along the way.
I think overall I'm glad I watched it. This doesn't nail its concept, and there's definitely room for notable improvement...but it's a successfully weird and compelling film all the same.
Happy Birthday, Al.
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| Fun note: Angelo Rossitto, pictured here, would go on to play Master of "Master Blaster" fame in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. |
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