Saturday Night At The Movies


The Docu-horror Picture Show

By Dennis Hartley























Whatever happened to Fay Wray?





In honor of Halloween weekend (we can call it that, when Halloween falls on a Friday, right?), and in a desperate search of a theme for this week’s post (heh), I thought I’d eschew the usual “Top 10 Horror Films” tact in favor of something REALLY scary-real life. Because, let’s face it. Try as they might, Hollywood can never really match the thrills, the chills and grotesqueries of, say, reading the newspaper, watching CNN, going online to look at your 401k, popping into a Denny’s at 3am, or waiting for next Tuesday’s results. Documentary filmmakers have been on to this little secret for years.

So forget the exploding squibs, the fakey Karo syrup blood and severed prosthetic limbs-here’s my Top 10 list of creepy, scary, frightening, haunting, spine-tingling tales that you literally could not make up (as per usual, in no particular ranking order). Er….”enjoy”?

The Atomic Cafe-Whoopee we’re all gonna die! In a big, scary mushroom cloud. But along the way, we might as well have a few laughs. That seems to be the impetus behind this harrowingly funny compilation of U.S. government propaganda shorts from the Cold War era, that were originally designed to “educate” the public about how to best “survive” a nuclear attack (all you have to do is get under a desk…everyone knows that!). In addition to the Civil Defense campaigns (which include the classic “duck and cover” tutorials) the filmmakers have drawn from a rich vein of military training films, which generally reduce the possible effects of a nuclear strike to something akin to a barrage of shelling from, oh I don’t know… a really big field howitzer. The genius of the film lies in its complete lack of narration (irony speaks louder than words, too). This also gives the film a timeless quality; you could very easily apply its “message” to the current world stage (everything old is new again). It makes a perfect double bill with Dr. Strangelove.

Brother's Keeper- An absolutely riveting documentary about a dirt-poor, semi-literate rural upstate New York farmer named Delbert Ward, who was charged with murdering his brother in 1990. Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky follow a year or so in the life of Delbert and his two surviving brothers, as they weather the pressures of the trial and the media circus that surrounds it. The clock seems to have stopped around 1899 on the aging bachelor brothers’ run-down farm, where they live together in relative seclusion in a small, unheated shack (at times, one is reminded of the family in the classic X-Files episode, “Home”) The prosecution claims that the brothers conspired to kill their ailing sibling, coming up with some rather oddball motives. The defense attorney’s conjecture is that the victim died of natural causes, and that Delbert was coerced by law enforcement into signing a written confession (admitting a “mercy killing”), thereby taking advantage of the fact that he was uneducated. He also cagily riles up the town folk to rally behind “the boys” by portraying the D.A. and investigating authorities as city slickers, out to railroad a simple farmer. Is Delbert really “simple”? Watch and decide.

The Corporation - While it's not exactly news to any thinking person that corporate greed and manipulation affects everyone's life on this planet in one way or the other, co-directors Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott have managed to deliver the message in a unique and engrossing fashion. By applying a point-by-point psychological “profile” to the base rudiments of “corporate think”, Achbar and Abbott build a solid case to prove that if the “corporation” were, um, corporeal, “he” would be Norman Bates. Mixing archival footage with observations from the expected talking heads (Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, etc.) and the unexpected (some CEOs who are actually sympathetic with the filmmaker’s point of view) along with the colorful (a self-professed "corporate spy" who makes McCain’s ratfuckers look like Boy Scouts), the film gives us the full perspective not only from the watchdogs, but from the belly of the beast itself. There are enough audacious "exposes" trotted out to keep conspiracy theorists, environmentalists and human rights activists tossing and turning in sweat-soaked sheets for nights on end.

The Cruise-I used to hang out with a co-worker who had a bit of an enigmatic soul. He would pace about his living room, quaffing beers and expounding on the universe. Sometimes, he would stop dead in his tracks, give me a faraway look, and say, “Trust me, Dennis-you don’t want to be in here,” while stabbing a finger at his forehead. Then, he would resume with his pacing and his (always entertaining) pontificating. The idea of being in someone else’s head is always a bit “horror show”, don’t you think? If you can take it, you might want to check out this one-of-a-kind doc that spends nearly 80 minutes in “here”. Specifically, inside the head of one Tim “Speed” Levitch, a tour guide for Manhattan’s Gray Line double-decker buses. Levitch’s world view is, um, interesting, to say the least. And he is nothing, if not verbose. Is he crazy? Is he some kind of post-modern prophet? Or is he just another eccentric, fast-talking New Yorker? It’s a strange, unique and weirdly exhilarating roller coaster ride through the consciousness of being.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston -The full horror of schizophrenia can only be truly known by those who are afflicted, but this rockumentary about cult alt-folk singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston comes pretty close to being the next worse thing to actually being there. Johnston has waged an internal battle between inspired creativity and mental illness for most of his life (not unlike Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson and Joe Meek). The filmmakers recount a series of apocryphal stories about how Johnston, like Chance the Gardener in Being There
, stumbles innocently and repeatedly into the right place at the right time, steadily amassing a sizeable grass roots following. Everything appears to be set in place for his Big Break, until an ill-advised tryst with hallucinogenic substances sends him (literally) spiraling into complete madness. While on a private plane flight with his pilot father, Johnston has a sudden epiphany that he is Casper the Friendly Ghost, and decides to wrest the controls, causing the plane to crash. Both men walk away relatively unscathed, but Daniel is soon afterwards committed to a mental hospital. The story becomes even more surreal, as Johnston is finally “discovered” by the major labels, who engage in a bidding war while their potential client is still residing in the laughing house (only in America). By turns darkly humorous, sad, and inspiring.

Grey Gardens -“The Aristocrats!” There’s no murder or mayhem involved in this real-life Gothic character study by renowned documentarians Albert and David Maysles (Salesman , Gimme Shelter), but you’ll still find it to be quite creepy. Edith Bouvier Beale (who was in her early 80s at the time of filming) and her middle aged daughter Edie were living under decidedly less than hygienic conditions in a spooky old dark manor in East Hampton, L.I. with a menagerie of cats and raccoons when the brothers decided to profile them (their halcyon “high society” days were, needless to say, behind them). The fact that the women were related to Jackie O (Edith the elder was her aunt) makes this Fellini-esque nightmare even more twisted. You are not likely to encounter a mother-daughter combo quite like “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” more than once in a lifetime. The intrinsic camp value of the Edies was not lost on Broadway; a musical adaptation (I think that’s a first for a documentary) ran for 2 years. Coming soon: a dramatized version produced by HBO with Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore (oy vay).

In the Realms of the Unreal -Artist Henry Darger is not usually mentioned in the same breath as Picasso, but he nonetheless makes for a fascinating study. Darger was a nondescript recluse who worked as a janitor for his entire adult life. He had no significant relationships of record and died in obscurity in 1973. While sorting out the contents of the small Chicago apartment he had lived in for years, his landlady discovered a treasury of artwork and writings, including over 300 paintings. The centerpiece was an epic, 15,000-page illustrated novel, which Darger had meticulously scribed in long hand over a period of decades (it was literally his life’s work). The subject at hand: An entire mythic alternate universe populated mostly by young, naked hermaphrodites (the”Vivian girls”). Although it’s tempting to dismiss Darger as a filthy old pervert, until you have actually seen the astonishing breadth of Darger’s monster from the id, spilled out over so many pages and so much canvas, it’s hard to convey how weirdly mesmerizing it all is (especially if you catch an exhibit, which I saw here in Seattle last year). The doc mixes Darger’s bio with animation of his artwork, and actors supplying narration from his tome.

An Inconvenient Truth- It’s the end of the world as we know it. Apocalyptic sci-fi has become scientific fact-now that’s scary. Former VP/Oscar winner Al Gore is a Power Point-packing Rod Serling, submitting a gallery of nightmare nature scenarios for our disapproval. I’m tempted to say that this chilling look at the results of unchecked global warming is only showing us the tip of the proverbial iceberg…but it’s melting too fast.

Sicko - Torture porn for the uninsured! Our favorite agitprop filmmaker, Michael Moore, grabs your attention right out of the gate with a real Bunuel moment. Over the opening credits, we are treated to shaky home video depicting a man pulling up a flap of skin whilst patiently stitching up a gash on his knee with a needle and thread, as Moore deadpans in V.O. (with his cheerful Midwestern countenance) that the gentleman is an avid cyclist- and one of the millions of Americans who cannot afford health insurance. The film proceeds to delve into some of the other complexities contributing to the overall ill health of our current system; such as the monopolistic power and greed of the pharmaceutical companies, the lobbyist graft, and (perhaps most horrifying of all) the compassionless bureaucracy of a privatized health “coverage” system that focuses first and foremost on profit, rather than on actual individual need. Better eat your Wheaties.

Zoo -When the Seattle press originally broke the story of a Boeing engineer dying from a perforated colon as the result of his “love” for horses, that alone was weird and disturbing enough (not to mention the cruelty to animals angle). But when it was revealed that the deceased was a member of a sizable group of like-minded individuals, calling themselves “zoophiles”, who traveled from all parts of the country to converge on a farm where their “special needs” were catered to, I remember thinking that it was a scenario beyond the ken of a Cronenberg or a Lynch; it was horror in the most abject sense of the word. That being said, there is still a “bad car wreck” fascination about the tale, resulting in an eerie, compelling and thought-provoking Errol Morris-style documentary about the darkest side of (in) human desire. To their credit, filmmakers Robinson Devor and Charles Mudede keep a sensitive, neutral tone; it is not as exploitative as you might assume.

Previous posts with related themes:

Oh come, all ye Pagans: DVDs for All Hallows Eve

Divine Trash, Hidden Jewels-Part 2: Klaus Kinski


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