A DISH BEST SERVED COLD

THE NIGHT VISITOR (1971: Dir. Laszlo Benedek)

Some films crawl under your skin and make a home there. Upon my first viewing, I knew that I would never shake off The Night Visitor, a frigid thriller of resolute revenge. Directed without artistic pretension by Budapest native Laslo Benedek (The Wild One, Death of a Salesman), this US/Swedish co-production revels in the cold landscape, both physical and emotional, of its protagonists. Harnessing the intense screen personas of Ingmar Bergman alumni Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann cast as resentful siblings, The Night Visitor, is a mesmerizing cat and mouse potboiler detailing the meticulous retribution of an imprisoned man who escapes from a remote asylum to frame his brother-in-law (Per Oscarsson) for murder, then returns to his cell undetected. An atmosphere of chilly alienation emanates from the Nordic locations of the story, shot in the wintry wilds of Sweden and Denmark. Exacting his rancorous reprisal, Salem (Von Sydow), must use almost every scrap of tied-together clothes and bedding in order to scale his high prison walls and travel miles across windswept snowy tundra in shorts and a t-shirt. Proper Brit Trevor Howard is the wily Inspector investigating this seemingly perfect crime and it's his scenes matching wits with Von Sydow's stoical Scandinavian psychopath that demonstrate the unique effectiveness of seemingly mismatched international casting. Despite its starry cast The Night Visitor had a rather unremarkable origin starting as a story by hack American TV writer Samuel Roeca (Rawhide, Mission:Impossible) and later polished into script form by British screenwriter Guy Elmes (Across the Bridge). Securing the respected talents of Benedek, and superstar film composer Henry Mancini (Experiment in Terror) producer Mel Ferrer must have seen the film as a companion piece to his hit big-screen adaptation of the Broadway nail-biter Wait Until Dark (1967), which had starred his former wife Audrey Hepburn. Both are Hitchcockian tales of suspense, but whereas Wait Until Dark invites the audience to experience the nerve-wracking vulnerability of its blind protagonist, The Night Visitor, asks its viewers to identify with, and even be impressed by, the near super-human tenacity of a central character twisted by an obsession for vengeance. Mancini, who scored Wait Until Dark with a darkly melodic accompaniment, here chose more dissonant and atonal compositions, amplifying the audience's anxiety as they bear witness to an inevitable and cruel catastrophe. Max Von Sydow went on to portray a legion of menacing malefactors, but for me he will always be the relentless lone figure of wrath from The Night Visitor. 
BLU-RAY

DOOMSDAY QUARTET Part Four

CIGARETTE BURNS (2005: Dir. John Carpenter)

Having strip-mined his own sci-fi horror oeuvre for the self-referential satire of Ghosts of Mars (2001), John Carpenter was clearly experiencing an extended period of creative burn-out when he received an attractive offer to return to his television roots. Showtime, the cable channel who had previously been unable to come to terms with Carpenter over his proposed portmanteau series Body Bags in 1993, had partnered with former film journalist turned writer-director Mick Garris to create an anthology show based on a series of raucous Hollywood dinner parties attended by a who's who of horror auteurs. Dubbed Masters of Horror, each 60 minute episode would be directed by a different veteran filmmaker, each enjoying complete artistic freedom in the matter of subject and content, within certain budgetary limitations. Appealing to these rebel outsiders who had been repeatedly worn down by the Hollywood development process, Showtime were able to attract a rogue's gallery of talent behind the camera. Enthusiastically joining Carpenter were many of his ghoulish contemporaries including John Landis, Joe Dante, Don Coscarelli, and Larry Cohen. The results were an often refreshing return to form, and in Carpenter's case, a brilliant book-end to his continued obsession with the supernatural apocalypse. Written by Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan, John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns, as his segment is entitled, could be read as a sly reference to the director's own oral addiction, as much as it refers to the vernacular for the ring-shaped reel-change markers that appear in the top right-hand corner of a projected celluloid frame of film. These markers have ominously begun appearing in the nightmares of the story's protagonist Kirby, a repertory cinema owner and film detective, played by a suitably seedy Norman Reedus. He has been hired by reptilian film collector Udo Kier, to locate the (fictional) lost horror classic La Fin Absolue du Monde, a notoriously chimerical cinematic opus reputedly responsible for driving everyone who saw it, including its own creator, insane. Kirby is also haunted by the loss of his girlfriend Annie (Zara Taylor), whom he was unable to save from a deadly drug overdose. Brought on by Kirby's search, reality itself seems to unravel, allowing Carpenter to stage imaginative scenes of the coming cataclysm, running the gambit from disquieting dread to giggling gory excess. It is however, the tragedy of a lost love that hangs over the events like a veil of sadness, with the director deftly bringing the manic atmosphere into emotional focus just in time for the rushed bravura climax dictated by the abbreviated running time. Cigarette Burns signaled Carpenter's renewed relish as a compelling storyteller, and he immediately followed this up with Pro-Life, a Season 2 Masters of Horror episode satirizing fundamentalist religious groups  and the ongoing U.S. abortion debate. This brief burst of creativity seemingly came to an end in 2010 with The Ward, a well-acted and suitably atmospheric tale of five women confined to a mental ward who become the prey of a vengeful ghost. Set in 1966 with a female dominated cast, The Ward was a fresh twist on Carpenter's typical tales of terror that disappointingly failed to engage both audiences and critics. More than half a decade later and he has still not returned to either the big or small screens, but last year he did release a album of instrumental music reminiscent of his spooky film scores. Even if Carpenter officially retires from film-making he will forever be revered for a lasting body of work, and of these horrific hallucinations none are memorable than his doomsday quartet. DVD REGION 1