Ten Days of Terror!: Bloody Moon

Film: Bloody Moon (Die Säge des Todes)
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

Oh, boy. This is going to be interesting because Bloody Moon (or Die Säge des Todes in German, which translates to “The Saw of Death”) is one of those movies that doesn’t make a great deal of sense. This is a movie made by a Spanish director with a German name and mainly German cast, and in the style of an Italian horror movie. That kind of confusion is going to be indicative of what is to come.

I mean that sincerely. This is a movie that exists so that director Jesús Franco could do things like stab a woman through the nipple, saw a woman’s head off, and have an actress simulate sex sounds. There isn’t a lot here that makes cohesive sense beyond a set of loosely-held plot points that sort of go in the same direction.

Ten Days of Terror!: I Saw What You Did

Film: I Saw What You Did
Format: DVD from Ella Johnson Memorial Public Library through interlibrary loan on gigantic television.

There’s a part of me that loves a William Castle movie. Castle’s movies were often campy and goofy and relied at least in part on gimmicks. 13 Ghosts gave the audience special glasses to see the ghosts on screen; The Tingler had movie theaters add seat buzzers to freak out the audience. Because of this, it’s easy to forget that William Castle was actually a decent film director. I Saw What You Did is right up Castle’s alley, but it’s a surprisingly effective little thriller.

In fact, it’s a little surprising that I Saw What You Did hasn’t been remade, although parts of it have certainly been used by other films at times. The central conceit is that a couple of girls and the younger sister of one of them, given a night on their own, decide to make a series of prank calls. And, as it happens, they call the wrong guy on the wrong night and say exactly the wrong thing.

Ten Days of Terror!: Pieces

Film: Pieces (Mil gritos tiene la noche)
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

The film Pieces, (Mil gritos tiene la noche in Spanish, which translates to “The night has 1000 screams”) is made by a Spanish director and was filmed in Spain, but it feels very much like a giallo film. Essentially, this is a film where a crazed killer stalks girls at a college campus in Boston, hacks them apart with a chainsaw, and runs off with parts (or, perhaps “pieces”) of the corpse. So, this is a serial killer horror story, incredibly bloody, and has no real supernatural elements. It screams “giallo.”

We’re going to start at some point in the past where young Timmy (Alejandro Hernandez at this point in the film) is caught by his mother (May Heatherly)putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a nude woman. His mother reacts all out of proportion to this, demanding that her son throw it away and essentially accusing him of being a pervert like his father. Timmy then overreacts as well, coming back into the room with an axe and killing his mother. Timmy then cuts his mother into…pieces…and hides in the closet, pretending to be a witness rather than the perpetrator when people finally show up.

Ten Days of Terror!: Cure

Film: Cure (Kyua)
Format: Blu-ray from Sandwich Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

As with any genre, there are lots and lots of subgenres in the horror genre. Cure, with the very Anglicized Japanese name Kyua is a serial killer film, but there is a lot here that is at least implied to be supernatural. Serial killer films are frequently upsetting because of their connection to something that could happen. What makes Cure more upsetting is not the implied supernatural element, but the fact that the murders in this film feel random, senseless, and like anyone could be on either side of them.

The story begins in the middle of a series of bizarre murders being investigated by Kenichi Takabe (Kōji Yakusho). Each of the crimes on the surface appear to be completely unrelated. They all have different perpetrators, so it’s difficult to call them part of the work of a serial killer. However, the crimes are very clearly related because they occur in very specific ways that are identical.

Ten Days of Terror!: Pearl

Film: Pearl
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

I need to deal with my Mia Goth issue. Everyone seems to like Mia Goth more than I do. I am convinced that this stems from where I was introduced to her on the screen. I first saw her in A Cure for Wellness, a film that should have been better and was also marred by the presence of Dane DeHaan, an actor I have never warmed to. Goth probably deserves better from my opinion, and the fact that she is the clear darling of the modern horror crowd means I’m going to have to get used to her. Pearl, a film I have avoided for a couple of years, is the next step in this evolution for me.

Pearl is prequel to Ti West’s X, the first movie where we are introduced to the Pearl character. In the first film, Goth plays both Maxine and Pearl (under a good amount of prosthetic makeup to age her). Pearl is a disturbed character, something that tends to be fascinating to horror movie fans, so it makes sense that people would want this—an origin story. That said, if you haven’t seen X, this discussion is necessarily going to involve spoilers for that film. We can’t talk about Pearl without talking about the character, after all. Consider the rest of this under a spoiler tag specifically for X and not Pearl. You’ve been warned.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Film: The Girl Who Knew Too Much (The Evil Eye)
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

I get frustrated with variant versions of films. I understand why they exist, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like the confusion that they cause. The Girl Who Knew Too Much (literally translated from the Italian La ragazza che sapeva troppo) is typically thought of as the original giallo. But, because American International Pictures wasn’t convinced of the film’s marketability, a different version was released in the U.S. under the name The Evil Eye. The basic plot is the same in both versions, of course, but the American version is a touch longer, emphasizes more comedy, and comes with a separate soundtrack.

What it means for me in this case, is that while looking for The Girl Who Knew Too Much, I could only find the American version, about six minutes longer, but more comedic, and thus a bit less of a traditional giallo despite essentially starting the style. I guess this is what happens when there’s an American version and I’m sitting in the middle (sorta) of America. You get what you can get. I suppose I shouldn’t complain since I was able to watch it at all.

Ten Days of Terror!: Black Belly of the Tarantula

Film: Black Belly of the Tarantula (La tarantola dal ventre nero)
Format: Streaming video from AMC on gigantic television.

Horror movies are often judged on the quality of their kills. When people talk about slasher movies, for example, they talk about the killers, but mostly in the context of the various kills. People like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers based on their presence, but also based on their kill count and the actual kills themselves. The murder method may be the most important aspect of a movie killer. Over a franchise, this comes down to amount of blood and diversity of kills. In a single movie, it’s about the specific method itself. This is the main thing that makes Black Belly of the Tarantula (or La tarantola dal ventre nero work as well as it does.

In fact, in Black Belly of the Tarantula it’s less about the killing itself and more about the set up. The actual murders are pretty standard slasher fare—a knife and a lot of Jack the Ripper-like deep slashes. What makes all of this interesting is that before the victims are killed, they are injected with a wasp venom that leaves them conscious but paralyzed. In the natural world, wasps do this to large spiders, paralyzing them and then laying an egg in them; the egg then hatches and devours the still-living spider while the wasp is in its larval form. In this movie, our victims are merely sliced up and killed.