Grabbed by the Balsam

“I used that in THE EXORCIST. There’s a shot of, uh, well, frankly it’s a shot of a character being grabbed by the scrotum.”

William Friedkin, speaking in PSYCHO extra feature In the Master’s Shadow: Hitchcock’s Legacy, comparing Martin Balsam’s death scene in PSYCHO to a shot in his own shocker. His use of the word “frankly” I find, frankly, hilarious.

But he’s wrong.

This is a passable doc — what’s frustrating is they have people of the calibre of Scorsese, Carpenter, Friedkin, but they have to make room for Eli Roth and the composer of BASIC INSTINCT 2. There’s an assortment of editors and sound designers, and they mainly earn their presence by saying interesting or amusing things.

There’s also a colorized shot from Alfred Hitchcock Presents where they give Hitch a hideously crimson, ready-to-burst head, which looks set momentarily to take flight from his collar and go off to star in an Albert Lamorisse short. Or like somebody’s grabbed him by frankly the scrotum. My photo off the TV screen does not capture the full horror.

Friedkin tells us that he “found out” how Hitchcock filmed Balsam’s topple down the Bates house stairs, and duplicated it by attaching the camera to his scrotum agony man. Which isn’t what Hitch did at all, so I wonder what the “finding out” consisted of.

Hitchcock achieved his shot with rear projection, which most viewers can tell, I think. It looks as if Balsam is attached to the camera because he doesn’t move in relation to it. He’s sitting on a gimbal so he can sway from side to side but nobody seems to have thought of sitting that on a dolly so his distance from the camera can vary. The unreality of the effect is dreamlike, and Friedkin seems to have latched onto this bug and treated it as a feature.

The moving background was shot with what Hitch called “the monorail,” a kind of STAIRLIFT OF TERROR attached to the banister which let the operator slide smoothly down from landing to hallway.

The shot in THE EXORCIST always struck me as a bit of a blunder. It’s the kind of tricksy effect Friedkin normally eschewed in the name of realism. Screenwriter William Peter Blatty stuffed his first draft with fancy effects, and Friedkin tore them all out. A particularly extreme or striking shot should accompany important dramatic moments, I feel. Well, THE EXORCIST is full of traumatic stuff, but it seems to me that a mere ball-crushing, inflicted upon an insignificant character whose testicles play no further role in the story, doesn’t rate this kind of splashy treatment.

The shot goes by really fast, though, so I don’t think it does much harm. I mean, I would say that, they’re not my balls.

Supposing Hitchcock HAD attached a camera to Balsam, though. He’d still have had to devise a way to get his actor to stumble backward downstairs without breaking his neck (or the camera), so he’d still have needed a monorail. But a bigger one. And the resulting movement of the actor would be just as unreal, although I guess he’s have been more IN THE SCENE, instead of the sort of Cocteauesque feeling we get. Which would have been even more of a mismatch for THE EXORCIST, so in a way Friedkin misinterpreting or being misinformed about the PSYCHO shot worked to his benefit.

In the same piece, Scorsese talks about being influenced by the shower scene for the bit in RAGING BULL where Sugar Ray delivers an apocalyptic pounding to Jake LaMotta’s face-bones. And nifty intercutting of the two sequences creates a real sense of connectedness, with many shots appearing like exact analogs of one another. PSYCHO, of course, has no counterpart to the brief shots where DP Michael Chapman attached his camera to Sugar Ray’s arm, so that his boxing glove sits in the foreground, a leathery planetoid, a spherical scrotum agony man locked in position, while Robert DeNiro’s spurting face seems to lunge forward for a violent collision. This kind of FREAK SHOT is, again, a little much, but Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker cut the shots so tight you can’t quite register how odd it is, and it pretty much scuds by as just part of a generalized onslaught. Scorsese had a similar angle in LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, the camera mounted on the arm of the cross as Christ hauls it along, but he didn’t use it. Too wacky. The only comparable angle is the view from the top of the cross as it’s raised into position — which he nicked (honourably) from Nick Ray’s KING OF KINGS.

Of course, LaMotta on the ropes is another Christ-figure, in the classic aeroplane pose.

(In framegrabbing that shot, I realize it’s a very different angle, though with the same crosscam effect, and there’s another shot moments earlier where the camera is attached to a hammer nailing Willem Dafoe or a disposable body double to the crossbeam. Also, arguably, too wacky, but again it’s quick and also we can at least agree that the moment is an important one, worthy of special effort.)

House Warning

One reason Damiano Damiani might be more obscure than he deserves, despite his easy-to-remember name, is that his two biggest films were artistic disasters. The Leone-produced A GENIUS, TWO PARTNERS, AND A DUPE (aka NOBODY’S THE GREATEST) is usually consigned to the less-said-the-better bin, though I plan on giving it another try. We took a look at the De Laurentiis-produced AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION, in the spirit of excavation — could anything be retrieved from the rubble of this sequel/knock-off?

It was a bold, trashy idea: make a sequel to the very successful (but dull) THE AMITYVILLE HORROR while also ripping off THE EXORCIST. Despite the US locations and studio filming at Churubusco in Mexico where the DeLaurentiis-Lynch DUNE was shot, this can be categorized alongside all those Italian imitations of the Blatty-Friedkin blockbuster, except that surprisingly it omits nearly all the gross (and highly commercial) elements.

The script is credited to Tommy Lee Wallace, something of a specialist in sequels to other peoples’ films; Dardano Sacchetti, frequent Lucio Fulci collaborator and schlockmeister, seems also to have contributed. The movie’s a prequel, purporting to show what happened to the family who died in the house before James Brolin et al moved in — which we kind of already know. And the story has the son called Sonny aiming a rifle at Dad’s head within minutes, so there’s not a great distance to cover.

Still, there’s good news: the actors are decent. Burt Young is the paterfamilias and Damiani, in it for the money, at least tries to interest himself in the possibility of this being a portrait of a dysfunctional family. Jack Magner as Sonny is very good indeed, required to go through a hell of a lot of transformations, both emotional and physical. Everyone, even the kids, seems well up to their tasks, though the family does initially seem both a parody of American family life, a step removed from The Simpsons, and at the same time more Italian than American — bursting into song, squabbling at high volume, becoming hysterical — which set of stereotypes are we going for?

But the abusive father stuff is authentically disturbing, which is good because non of the cod-supernatural stuff is a bit scary. There are some good practical effects but everything aiming at suspense is slathered over with Lalo Schifrin’s hackneyed score. He repeats the spooky lullaby approach first trotted out in Mario Bava’s KILL, BABY, KILL! — I guess it has an authentic Italian lineage but it’s pretty old by now and feels tired as hell. Schifrin was fired from THE EXORCIST, Friedkin at one point hurling part of his score out of the cutting room and across the WB parking lot, and this doubtless is his revenge. Damiani should have slung it from one of those quarter-circle window eyes.

The other angle Damiani finds to excite some interest is the mental illness one: if it weren’t for all the pyrotechnics, much of the story, even the bladder effects, could work as a rather tasteless exploration of schizophrenia. Sonny hears demon voices urging him to kill from his Walkman, the best use of the film’s 1982 setting (but if it’s a prequel to the ’79 film, the device wouldn’t have been available, surely?)

The intriguing parts, like Sonny’s Sony, are underexploited — the initial possession, with the camera plunging down on the partly-undressed young man like a spectral rapist, isn’t developed into anything more disturbing than consensual sibling incest (which is a BIT disturbing). And then all the main characters die, except Sonny, who becomes largely unavailable to us except as a bloviating demon voice, articulated through a set of disfiguring Albert Steptoe teeth.

Fortunately or otherwise, the film has established a priest, James Olson — Father Adamsky, a Damien Karras clone with the interesting parts deleted. He even has a blandly cheerful chum — “What’s this guy doing in the film?” I asked. “Father Karras had a priest pal, so he has to have one too,” diagnosed Fiona. Even if he has no story function whatsoever.

Rebooting the story, after the massacre, into another kind of thing altogether should be the film’s most original trope, but it merely completes the metamorphosis into EXORCIST MCMLXXXII: IT’S A BOY. In the rush to banality, nobody even wonders if Sonny might be insane. At one point, Moses Gunn is required to facilitate a jailbreak so an exorcism can occur, and it turns into a replay of Norval’s escape from THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK. “Oh I couldn’t do THAT, Mr. Kockenlocker,” one longs to hear Olson say. (The Sturges film also portrays a violent dad, a defiant child, an oppressive home — “The house ain’t paid for yet!” — and a miraculous ending.)

And, through it all, Damiani stays engaged — the blocking of actors and camera is consistently excellent in what I suppose we must call the dramatic scenes. The job was not just a paycheck, it was also I guess a potential calling card, but one soiled by the tackiness of the project: nobody much noticed Magner’s nuanced and compelling performance, or Damiani’s skill with the camera (making it rise over his young leads head and turn upside down at one point — and having this make some kind of sense).

The film finds its place alongside Richard Fleischer’s 3D follow-up: skilled works by inventive artists that never rise to the status of interesting stories because the material is so flat and derivative. A perfect double feature if you’re feeling too inspired and optimistic and need to be let down a bit.

An Odyssey in Bits: Keir Dullea and Gone Tomorrow

Thanks to the acid wit of Noel Coward for the title. Noel co-starred with Dullea (happily still very much here today) in Otto Preminger’s BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING.

2001’s second superimposed caption appears: it’s not altogether certain that THE DAWN OF MAN has finished (it was apparently in play all through the orbital and lunar ballet) but at any rate the JUPiTER MISSION has begun.What was strange to me, this time around, was how fast this section of the film seems to go by, when you watch it in isolation. The pace of the shots may be slowish, but the narrative is super-economical.1. The Discovery sails past us.

(Various spaceship designs were considered with various propulsion systems, but the final look chosen is less about scientific practicality and more about style. The bony colouring adds to the Discovery’s resemblance to a giant skull and spinal cord. Also a little like a spermatozoa. So it also makes me think of the miniature Spike-creatures in ERASERHEAD.) 2. We cut to inside Kubrick’s giant hamster wheel. Here’s Gary Lockwood jogging, in a whole series is striking shots, including an up-butt angle as startling as the one George Sidney devotes to Ann-Margret in VIVA LAS VEGAS. Bruce Bennett’s citation of TRAPEZE as an influence gets backed up here — not only for the earlier use of the Blue Danube, but for turning the image sideways so it can fill the WS frame. It’s true that Kubrick lingers over these images, but they’re well worth it. My problem with EYES WIDE SHUT was its, to my mind erronious, supposition that Tom Cruise walking down a street or into an apartment was worthy of the same following-too-close attention.

(How does the craft generate its gravity? It’s not rotating in the exterior shots. Is there actually a big rotating wheel inside it for the living space? Seems to be the case. Wild.) 3. & 4. Then we get a couple of video bits — Lockwood’s taped message from home, and the BBC interview with the crew and HAL, which infodumps all the necessary exposition on us in a reasonable engaging and natural way.

Bowman and Poole have i-Pads so they can watch TV as they down their space-chow (from plastic pallettes packed with nutritional coloured pastes. Yummy).5. And then HAL is glitching right away — his mental breakdown is really just as speedy as Jack Torrence’s in THE SHINING. It’s when he says, “Just a moment. Just a moment.” Computers shouldn’t repeat themselves. It feels wrong. Later, he will repeat himself A LOT, so I know I’m right.

Dullea and Lockwood are beautifully blank. GL said they looked at reports on what astronauts were like, and their inexpressive performances reflect the demands that those fired into space should NOT be hysterical, hand-flapping types of furious fist-wavers. Ryan Gosling’s unemotive Neil Armstrong in FIRST MAN makes this a big story point, whereas Kubrick and Clarke and the cast just take it for granted. The fact that HAL is more appealing and warm is certainly no accident — Kubrick liked machines. Unfortunately, the story he’s telling requires HAL to turn homicidal, so this is far from the “alternative Frankenstein myth” he hoped to achieve with A.I., proving to us that our machines might be our heirs, our best hope of leaving something of ourselves behind.HAL trounces Poole at chess.

Clarke thought it a shame that the film didn’t make clear the reason for HAL’s malfunction: mission control had instructed him to withhold the true purpose of the voyage, in effect to lie, which was against his programming. (To lie is already to err.) When he tries to sound out Dullea’s Dave Bowman about the mission parameters, he’s probably looking for a chance to open up and get things off his metallic chest. Bowman brushes him off, and so he has to kill all the damn humans who are clearly going to screw this thing up. Again, his motivation connects him with Jack Torrence’s rant about “MY responsibilities to my employers,” though he expresses himself with a less hysterical tone.

I read somewhere that all Kubrick films are about somebody being entrusted with administering a system, and then screwing it up due to “human error.” Which sounds sort of right, but then you need to get out the old shoehorn to make it fit LOLITA (how not to be a step-parent) and THE SHINING (how not to look after a hotel: a sort of Fawlty Towers with axe murders) and EYES WIDE SHUT continues to be an outlier (the system failing to be administered is what, adultery?). But anyway, mission control has screwed up royally, somewhere in between the Clavius freak-out signal and this sequence, and now our eerily calm astronauts are going to pay the price. 6. The first EVA scene, though we’re our Extra Vehicular Activity is taking place in another, smaller vehicle. Contemporary critics harped on about the heavy breathing here, as if it were a showy and clumsy stylistic touch, rather than a logical solution to the problem of What can you hear in space? Kubrick alternates bold silences with music and subjective space-suit sound, all of which are great choices.

(William Friedkin on the excellent The Movies That Made Me podcast complained of Kubrick’s extreme low angle shot in THE SHINING when Jack talks to the food locker door. “Who’s POV is that meant to be?” But it’s another logical solution: how to shoot a man talking to a door and see all of his face rather than a profile. If you just do very logical things, like a machine would do them, maybe you will develop a striking personal style, because everyone has their own logic. And that’s why there’s so much trouble in this world.)7. HAL can read lips.

(Just like in real life, as soon as somebody goes a bit wrong mentally, everyone else starts tiptoeing around and lying and humouring them and unintentionally but very effectively escalating their paranoia…)

Though his eyeball was a fisheye lens earlier, and I think he even asks Dave to hold his drawings closer, but now he has a zoom and can follow a conversation in which his two pals are plotting to murder him. Which confirms him in his decision to off them first, which presumably he was going to do anyway since why else is he tricking them into cutting off communication with Earth and going E.V.A.?

And at this point, Kubrick goes audaciously to an intermission, and so shall I.Incidentally, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY stars the Marquis de Sade; Sir George; Sam Slade; Emanuel Shadrack; Lord Beaverbrook; Off-camera voice of Jesus; Scrimshaw’s henchman; Commander Ed Straker and Hank Mikado.

Imagine you somehow find yourself watching a sixties Canadian TV play and the off-camera voice of Jesus rings out and it’s instantly, chillingly recognizable as the dulcet tones of HAL-9000.

Also, you should see the 1957 version of OEDIPUS REX directed by Tyron Guthrie and Abraham Polonsky, in which among the voices issuing from behind Greek tragic masks are those of Douglas Rain and William Shatner. Sophocles has never seemed so interstellar!