Romano Scavolini's Nightmare

Romano Scavolini's Nightmare (aka 'Nightmares in a Damaged Brain'), now out on DVD via Code Red, has been an enduring favorite of mine. Over the decades, I've consulted it whenever I needed a shot of bleak, and it's always provided the charge I was craving.

The more I watch it, the more it reminds me of another favorite, the superior Clean Shaven ('93), Lodge Kerrigan's amazing odyssey of a schizophrenic man searching for his daughter. Both films are set in muted coastal regions (Nightmares in Florida, Clean Shaven in Long Island, NY), and take full advantage of their regional isolation, and sense of industrial decay. Downbeat and introspective, they'd make quite a double feature, something to slash your wrists by.

Grouped a little too lazily into the 'Slasher' category, Nightmare is a film about a man hunting humans, but it's also a film about his pain and the failure of the establishment to contain him.  As you do, he focuses his murderous desires on a family, and forms a strange type of relationship with a young boy, the family prankster. As this is a horror film, family members end up dead and dismembered, and director Scavolini (working with Tom Savini and Ed French) delivers the gore without restraint.

It's not a perfect film. It's slow in parts (particularly the middle) and the killer's decisions are not clear. Why does he pick this particular family to stalk? Did he once live in their house? Perhaps. Baird Stafford, who plays the killer, does a good job embodying the man with a damaged brain, a brain damaged further harmed by experimental, psychotic drugs. Although the marketing point of this film is graphic violence, it lifts itself out of the slasher ghetto inhabited by swill such as Final Exam, Savage Weekend, Chopping Mall and Prom Night by creating a truly disturbing aura around the killer and providing a sleazy, uneasy atmosphere of hopelessness. And, as noted, the violence is very graphic and features some underage mayhem.

The Code Red DVD features three versions of the movie. The version on the second disk in the best. An unbelievable misstep on the part of the distributor is the inclusion of a 95 minute Italian language interview with the director that is not subtitled (!) Yes, they didn't bother to get subtitles done. A rumor circulating is that somebody who was supposed to do the subs didn't come through with the goods. Come on, how hard would it have been to find someone who spoke Italian? Jesus! With street dates approaching and no subtitles done, wouldn't it have been wise to find someone else to do the job? Or am I too logical?

Gripes aside, it's great to see Nightmare out and about at last.

Top 22 Horror Films in 22 Years

Recently, there have been a great many horror lists published on various blogs as a rebuttal to Owen Gleiberman's list in Entertainment Weekly.

I cheated my list back 22 years so as to include In A Glass Cage, one of my favorite horror films of any time.

Good horror comedies such as Shaun of the Dead are missing because they're not real horror to me.

You won't find Blair Witch Project here because it is now and always has been utter shit.

I realize some films here such as Battle Royale may not meet everybody's definition of horror. For mine, the film's premise is horrific ) enough in my book -- kill all your friends and classmates or you die!

Utterly disturbing.

Extremely tense. Claustrophobic. Doesn't put a foot wrong.

The cheat ending still bothers me, and almost bumped it off the list, but everything that comes before it is true horror executed with love and gusto.

A masterpiece from the late Kinji Fukasaku, a god among directors.

Surreal, atmospheric horror.

One of the best Italian horror films ever made (and they've made some doozies). Grisly, surreal, erotic, disturbing, and beautiful.

Despite the lack of perfect versions of this, it is a rich, atmospheric horror film occasionally handicapped by wrong-headed comedy. Still, its necrophilic tone qualifies it for greatness.

I love Arturo Ripstein, and this phenomenal Mexican version of The Honeymoon Killers is sometimes unbearable to watch.

As I am not a fan of Audition (I find it quite boring), my Miike choice is the brilliant and twisted Ichii The Killer.

As the years pass, I like Silence of the Lambs less and Ridley Scott's Hannibal so much more.

Gary Oldman's 'Mason Verger' is a modern horror creation that Lon Chaney would have been proud of.

One of the most subversive horror films ever to be slipped through a studio gate.

Real horror with brutal catharsis.

Easily one of the most bizarre, troubling, and anxiety-inducing horror films. From director Fruit Chan.

I may be alone on this one, but John Dahl's riff on the Duel premise is a taut, unrelenting horror pic with a great, unseen villain ('Rusty Nail').

What can I say that hasn't already been said?

Powerful psychological horror that captures the terror of being a prisoner of your own delusions.

A nightmare captured on celluloid.

This '87 masterpiece of bloodsucking just slips through the 22-year gate.

One of the most bizarre, cruel, and horrific studies of child abuse ever burned to the screen, Midori is a worthy successor to Todd Browning's Freaks.

Based on Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show by Suehiro Maruo.

Supreme tension.

Masterful, understated horror fairytale.

Accomplished tale of alienation where the horror grows like cancer on sunburn.

David Mamet's only attempt at writing a horror picture is stark and frightening and unforgettable. Stuart Gordon's direction is flawless.

Obscure and Underground

I have always found ad mats of films that did no business or got lost in the machinery fascinating.

Behind the creation of every piece of movie marketing is "H" for Hope.

Another "H", Hindsight, is what gives these a strange, sad resonance.
From Michael Cimino, the Academy Award-winning director of The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, The Sicilian, and Year of the Dragon.

This Woody Harrelson drama of '96 disappeared quickly.

Cimino is currently in production on Man's Fate after more than a decade of absence from feature production.
Great documentary on the 10th Mountain Division, an arm of the American military that trained for mountain battles; the film focuses mostly on the preparation of the unit in Colorado.

Jorg Buttgereit's '87 arthouse horror flick did not receive many theatrical bookings due to its graphic subject matter, but it did play at New York's Cinema Village.

The film can rightly boast of an amazing score by Hermann Kopp, Daktari Lorenz (who also stars), and John Boy Walton (?)

An excellent Coming of Age film, and one of Scarlett Johansson's first leading roles.

Clean, Shaven ('93) is one of my favorite films of all time from an unsung visionary, Lodge Kerrigan.

Peter Green, who went on to play Zed in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction ('94) as a result of his performance here, is hypnotic as a schizophrenic man searching for his daughter.

Kerrigan's Claire Dolan ('98) and Keane ('04) are also must-see propositions.

Solid little crime drama from '95 that is not available on DVD.

Director James Bruce has mostly toiled in TV since, even doing a producer stint on The Apprentice.

I saw this when visiting New York and enjoyed my solitary afternoon viewing experience; I'm sure the Quad Cinema didn't enjoy it so much, nor did the producers.