Shocktober Revisited: The Addiction

 Abel Ferrara made The Addiction between Body Snatchers and The Funeral (there's also Dangerous Games, the Harvey Keitel / Madonna movie that most of us didn't see in there as well), the former I have not seen and the latter I have. It was interesting to see Ferrara making another movie set in contemporary New York, especially following Ms. 45, which is a "New York at the cusp of the 80s" and King of New York, the equivalent for the 1990s. This is more of the New York wedged between the end of the grunge era and the beginning of the Wu Tang dynasty. At least, that would have been the case if The Addiction came out in 1994 (the trademark on the credits) and not 1995 (released alongside The Funeral);  Maybe Ferrara wanted to draw a sharper contrast to Wes Craven's Vampire in Brooklyn.

 That brings us to the "spoiler" of The Addiction: it's about vampires. Not exactly conventional vampires - they don't really seem to have fangs and they aren't picky about how they get their blood into the system (more on that in a moment), but they have the same attitude of superiority over humans are generally pretty unpleasant. One of them, named Casanova in the credits (Annabella Sciorra) attacks Kathleen Conkin (Lili Taylor) and forces her into an alleyway (wait... this is sounding familiar) and taunts her before biting her neck and having a little snack. Kathleen is traumatized, but lives, and as the days go on, she notices some... changes. Light seems just a little more painful, her appetite for regular food diminishes. She starts vomiting blood. Kathleen has... The Addiction.

 Now if you're wondering if the title means we're going into metaphorical territory here, don't. Remember when I said in the Ms. 45 review that Ferrara likes to mix the "trashy with arthouse sensibilities"? Little did I know that the "subtext" in The Addiction was literally just going to be the text, but it's pretty clear the moment you see Kathleen use a syringe to draw blood from a sleeping transient and then inject it into her own veins. I guess I should have known it was coming sooner than that, because Cypress Hill's "I Want to Get High" is in the soundtrack almost immediately (the byproduct, I think, of executive producer Russell Simmons, whose name appears in the opening credits before Ferrara's or screenwriter Nicholas St. John's). It also plays later in the film, just in case you forgot - she wants to get high. So high.

 It turns out that drug addiction is only partially what Ferrara and St. John are going for with The Addiction: I haven't mentioned yet that Kathleen is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at the University of New York (that's what it says...), which kind of explains the fact that the film opens with a slideshow of atrocities committed in Vietnam and repeatedly comes back to a Holocaust exhibit in New York City, often juxtaposed with Kathleen finding new victims. The issue of how humans can be so, well, inhuman, dovetails into her research, or at least with making the allusions to philosophy more explicit. It's one thing to address a character who moves beyond good and evil, but it might be a little too on the nose for her professor (Paul Calderon) to assign Nietzsche in the class she's taking.

 Which is not to say I'm being too critical of The Addiction, but there's not much in the way of subtlety in the film. For some, the breaking point might be when Peina (Christopher Walken) shows up, and turns Kathleen's superiority complex on its ear. She's been prone to taking people, students, guys who leer at her on the street, and physically imposing her will on them (see, the will to power? get it?) while taunting them to "ask me to leave," which she never does. One night, she sneaks up behind Peina, who easily overtakes her and brings her up to his apartment. He's much older than she is and has a better grasp on "the addiction" (yes, that's what they call it in the movie). He's even learned to control it, to mask it, and to "pass" for human. He tells her she's "nothing" and suggests she reads Naked Lunch because "Burroughs really captures what it's like not to have a face." To some, his monologues are going to be the tipping point between "trashy arthouse" and "pretentious," but Peina's role in the overall narrative is a small one.

 The truth is that I can't really defend the philosophical or (later) religious overtones* in The Addiction - they are what they are, and barely disguised as anything else. If you aren't as familiar with Kathleen's field of study as I am, it might not be so apparent that this is a Philosophy 101 level** depiction of the vampire as Übermensch. The good news is that you can also enjoy it as an interesting take on the increasingly crowded genre of vampire movies. It's somewhere between Tony Scott's The Hunger and Chan-Wook Park's Thirst in its ambitions, but Ferrara's low-fi techniques give The Addiction a unique feel. Ferrara shot the film in twenty days, in black and white, and makes the best of chiaroscuro lighting (the criss-cross pattern on Casanova's face during the first attack is particularly striking).

 Lili Taylor is very good as Kathleen, who goes on a more interesting arc than I was expecting from the middle of the film. In a way, there are parallels to the protagonist of Ms. 45 - both go from positions of relative innocence (as innocent as a Ph.D. Philosophy candidate can be, anyway) to victims to taking control of their new-found stature, and eventually become indiscriminate killers. There's a scene late in the film when we realize that Kathleen has not simply been abandoning her victims that helps shift the film a bit, and leads to one of the bloodier vampire attacks this side of 30 Days of Night. Walken and Calderon are asked to carry most of the leaden dialogue about the nature of being that we maybe didn't need. I'm still on the fence about that, because even for 1994/5 this is a more interesting approach to vampires, and while not exactly novel (and definitely not subtle), it is refreshing considering what passes for bloodsuckers these days.

 By and large, The Addiction is Taylor's movie, but there are a few other characters that make an impression: Edie Falco comes in and out of the story as Jean, Kathleen's fellow PhD colleague. Fredro Starr (of Onyx fame, another group on the soundtrack) has a few memorable scenes as Black, who tries to pick up Kathleen early in the film and regrets it later. Kathryn Erbe (later of Oz and Stir of Echoes) is an anthropology student that Kathleen targets in the library, and the conversation they have after biting / being bitten is the first insight into Conklin's new outlook on life. While he's listed in the main credits, don't expect to see Michael Imperioli for very much in the film: he has one scene as a missionary, although his refusal to follow Kathleen inside is a bit of foreshadowing I didn't necessarily see coming.

 In fact, the ending in general helps The Addiction overcome some of the more obvious allegories of the film, even if the last shot is about as understated as a Slayer album (sorry, no Slayer on the soundtrack, but you do see a Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt early in the film). If you don't mind mixing your vampires with the revelation that "self awareness is the annihilation of self" and enjoy an atmospheric, gritty vampire story, you'll probably enjoy The Addiction. It's also an interesting companion piece to Ms. 45 and King of New York as a continued exploration of different sections of New York over time (fashion, crime, education), so on that level Ferrara succeeds. And let's be honest, it's a hell of a lot better than Wes Craven's Vampire in Brooklyn. Low hanging fruit, I know, but I'm still debating the relative merits of The Addiction. On one hand, I liked the execution visually, and the direction of the story was compelling, but on the other hand, it was like listening to a first year philosophy major lecture me about the nature of good and evil. It's a toss-up for now.


 * Late in the film, there are some direct quotes from R.C. Sproul, which echo a lot of early Calvinist writings about the nature of man and its inability to rise above sin on Earth. It's a little odd, if only because the end of the film is heavy on Catholic imagery, and seems to suggest the opposite - salvation is possible, or at least forgiveness.
 **Is Nietzsche philosophy 101? I came to him from another direction, in a religious studies class about "Masters of Suspicion," but I would gather most philosophy majors know Beyond Good and Evil, if not the rest.

Blogorium Review: The Addiction

 Continuing in an unofficial streak of "hey, there's another Abel Ferrara movie I haven't watched yet," I finished up Ms. 45 and noticed a copy of The Addiction on the "to see" pile. Ferrara made The Addiction between Body Snatchers and The Funeral (there's also Dangerous Games, the Harvey Keitel / Madonna movie that most of us didn't see in there as well), the former I have not seen and the latter I have. It was interesting to see Ferrara making another movie set in contemporary New York, especially following Ms. 45, which is a "New York at the cusp of the 80s" and King of New York, the equivalent for the 1990s. This is more of the New York wedged between the end of the grunge era and the beginning of the Wu Tang dynasty. At least, that would have been the case if The Addiction came out in 1994 (the trademark on the credits) and not 1995 (released alongside The Funeral);  Maybe Ferrara wanted to draw a sharper contrast to Wes Craven's Vampire in Brooklyn.

 That brings us to the "spoiler" of The Addiction: it's about vampires. Not exactly conventional vampires - they don't really seem to have fangs and they aren't picky about how they get their blood into the system (more on that in a moment), but they have the same attitude of superiority over humans are generally pretty unpleasant. One of them, named Casanova in the credits (Annabella Sciorra) attacks Kathleen Conkin (Lili Taylor) and forces her into an alleyway (wait... this is sounding familiar) and taunts her before biting her neck and having a little snack. Kathleen is traumatized, but lives, and as the days go on, she notices some... changes. Light seems just a little more painful, her appetite for regular food diminishes. She starts vomiting blood. Kathleen has... The Addiction.

 Now if you're wondering if the title means we're going into metaphorical territory here, don't. Remember when I said in the Ms. 45 review that Ferrara likes to mix the "trashy with arthouse sensibilities"? Little did I know that the "subtext" in The Addiction was literally just going to be the text, but it's pretty clear the moment you see Kathleen use a syringe to draw blood from a sleeping transient and then inject it into her own veins. I guess I should have known it was coming sooner than that, because Cypress Hill's "I Want to Get High" is in the soundtrack almost immediately (the byproduct, I think, of executive producer Russell Simmons, whose name appears in the opening credits before Ferrara's or screenwriter Nicholas St. John's). It also plays later in the film, just in case you forgot - she wants to get high. So high.

 It turns out that drug addiction is only partially what Ferrara and St. John are going for with The Addiction: I haven't mentioned yet that Kathleen is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at the University of New York (that's what it says...), which kind of explains the fact that the film opens with a slideshow of atrocities committed in Vietnam and repeatedly comes back to a Holocaust exhibit in New York City, often juxtaposed with Kathleen finding new victims. The issue of how humans can be so, well, inhuman, dovetails into her research, or at least with making the allusions to philosophy more explicit. It's one thing to address a character who moves beyond good and evil, but it might be a little too on the nose for her professor (Paul Calderon) to assign Nietzsche in the class she's taking.

 Which is not to say I'm being too critical of The Addiction, but there's not much in the way of subtlety in the film. For some, the breaking point might be when Peina (Christopher Walken) shows up, and turns Kathleen's superiority complex on its ear. She's been prone to taking people, students, guys who leer at her on the street, and physically imposing her will on them (see, the will to power? get it?) while taunting them to "ask me to leave," which she never does. One night, she sneaks up behind Peina, who easily overtakes her and brings her up to his apartment. He's much older than she is and has a better grasp on "the addiction" (yes, that's what they call it in the movie). He's even learned to control it, to mask it, and to "pass" for human. He tells her she's "nothing" and suggests she reads Naked Lunch because "Burroughs really captures what it's like not to have a face." To some, his monologues are going to be the tipping point between "trashy arthouse" and "pretentious," but Peina's role in the overall narrative is a small one.

 The truth is that I can't really defend the philosophical or (later) religious overtones* in The Addiction - they are what they are, and barely disguised as anything else. If you aren't as familiar with Kathleen's field of study as I am, it might not be so apparent that this is a Philosophy 101 level** depiction of the vampire as Übermensch. The good news is that you can also enjoy it as an interesting take on the increasingly crowded genre of vampire movies. It's somewhere between Tony Scott's The Hunger and Chan-Wook Park's Thirst in its ambitions, but Ferrara's low-fi techniques give The Addiction a unique feel. Ferrara shot the film in twenty days, in black and white, and makes the best of chiaroscuro lighting (the criss-cross pattern on Casanova's face during the first attack is particularly striking).

 Lili Taylor is very good as Kathleen, who goes on a more interesting arc than I was expecting from the middle of the film. In a way, there are parallels to the protagonist of Ms. 45 - both go from positions of relative innocence (as innocent as a Ph.D. Philosophy candidate can be, anyway) to victims to taking control of their new-found stature, and eventually become indiscriminate killers. There's a scene late in the film when we realize that Kathleen has not simply been abandoning her victims that helps shift the film a bit, and leads to one of the bloodier vampire attacks this side of 30 Days of Night. Walken and Calderon are asked to carry most of the leaden dialogue about the nature of being that we maybe didn't need. I'm still on the fence about that, because even for 1994/5 this is a more interesting approach to vampires, and while not exactly novel (and definitely not subtle), it is refreshing considering what passes for bloodsuckers these days.

 By and large, The Addiction is Taylor's movie, but there are a few other characters that make an impression: Edie Falco comes in and out of the story as Jean, Kathleen's fellow PhD colleague. Fredro Starr (of Onyx fame, another group on the soundtrack) has a few memorable scenes as Black, who tries to pick up Kathleen early in the film and regrets it later. Kathryn Erbe (later of Oz and Stir of Echoes) is an anthropology student that Kathleen targets in the library, and the conversation they have after biting / being bitten is the first insight into Conklin's new outlook on life. While he's listed in the main credits, don't expect to see Michael Imperioli for very much in the film: he has one scene as a missionary, although his refusal to follow Kathleen inside is a bit of foreshadowing I didn't necessarily see coming.

 In fact, the ending in general helps The Addiction overcome some of the more obvious allegories of the film, even if the last shot is about as understated as a Slayer album (sorry, no Slayer on the soundtrack, but you do see a Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt early in the film). If you don't mind mixing your vampires with the revelation that "self awareness is the annihilation of self" and enjoy an atmospheric, gritty vampire story, you'll probably enjoy The Addiction. It's also an interesting companion piece to Ms. 45 and King of New York as a continued exploration of different sections of New York over time (fashion, crime, education), so on that level Ferrara succeeds. And let's be honest, it's a hell of a lot better than Wes Craven's Vampire in Brooklyn. Low hanging fruit, I know, but I'm still debating the relative merits of The Addiction. On one hand, I liked the execution visually, and the direction of the story was compelling, but on the other hand, it was like listening to a first year philosophy major lecture me about the nature of good and evil. It's a toss-up for now.


 * Late in the film, there are some direct quotes from R.C. Sproul, which echo a lot of early Calvinist writings about the nature of man and its inability to rise above sin on Earth. It's a little odd, if only because the end of the film is heavy on Catholic imagery, and seems to suggest the opposite - salvation is possible, or at least forgiveness.
 **Is Nietzsche philosophy 101? I came to him from another direction, in a religious studies class about "Masters of Suspicion," but I would gather most philosophy majors know Beyond Good and Evil, if not the rest.

Horror Fest 6 Day Two: The Dead

 The undead have risen in Africa, and as the privileged try to escape in planes, the African army is trying to contain the outbreak (and failing). Lt. Brian Murphy (Rob Freeman) is a mechanic trying to get home to his family when the last plane out crashes. He washes up on the beach, escapes the zombies prowling the shore, and makes his way to the nearest town. Nearby, Sgt. Daniel Dembele (Prince David Oseia), is searching for his son, the sole survivor of an undead raid on their village. Murphy and Dembele's paths cross, and they agree to work together to reunite and escape. Murphy fixes a truck and the soldiers drive across the desert to find some sense of hope.

 The Dead is a pretty good zombie movie from Africa that suffers from serious pacing issues in the second half. This is a shame, because much of the promise of the first half of the film dissolves into a directionless conclusion that doesn't pack the punch it should. On top of that, the political subtext is muddled - is the white protagonist supposed to represent the role of America in African life, or is he simply just another example of the post-Colonial presence in the Third World? Lt Murphy and Sgt. Dembele are set up as two men with different objectives working together out of convenience, but (SPOILER) once Dembele is killed, his quest to find his son feels like a cheap distraction. Even when Murphy finds Dembele's song (by accident, mind you), it doesn't have the impact that it ought to.

 Zombie films tend to use the undead as a metaphor for the masses, but it's really unclear what The Dead is trying to with African zombies beyond the novelty. True, it is refreshing to see the undead shambling around in the desert, outside of the confines of large cities, but after a while it loses its appeal. The zombies don't serve any purpose - there's a suggestion of witch doctors and a dream sequence reminiscent of The Serpent and the Rainbow, but the undead are only a threat when the Ford brothers need them to be. Murphy easily hacks through a crowd of them near the end which lowers the stakes a few minutes later. The final zombie siege has no tension because we've already seen him survive.

 I feel like I'm beating up on The Dead too much; I did enjoy most of the first half, and for a low budget movie it looks very good. The effects are impressive and the location provides an interesting contrast to the average urban zombie warfare. The acting is pretty good, and if you're in the mood for an undead film that delivers on the gore, The Dead is worth checking out.

Blogorium Review: Splatter University (Re-visited)

Once upon a time, the Cap'n reviewed Splatter University, and in my younger and less critically astute days, I wrote the film off as a cheap knock-off slasher flick, looking to cash in on a craze already waning. Now that I've had some time doing serious film criticism, I can clearly see the error of my ways: Splatter University is a sly condemnation of religious extremism and Reagan-era politics disguised as an undistinguished, dispassionate entry into the horror omnibus. It disguises its own apparent inspiration from the Italian giallo film in order to "pass" as "just another slasher film," but when the right eyes view Splatter Universtiy*, it can be understood as the subtle masterpiece it is.

Do not be misled by its lurid artwork or relatively inane title; Splatter University is, in fact, the real deal. First time director Richard W. Haines, who co-wrote the film with John Michaels, Michael Cunningham, and Miljan Peter Ilich use the tropes of the "slasher film" to craft a rich and layered cinematic text which simultaneously serves and criticizes the subgenre of horror it is "categorized" in. (For my money, it exists in a higher echelon, but to this point Splatter University has been almost wholly ignored by the critical community).

On a surface level, the plot seems benign: At the outset, we begin our story in a mental institution (shades of Halloween or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), where a patient escapes by murdering one of the doctors and assuming his identity. Three years later, a Sociology professor is brutally murdered at St. Trinian's College, and the following semester her replacement, Julie Parker (Francine Forbes) arrives to take on a campus of indifferent, sexually active eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds. Parker immediately runs afoul of Father Janson (Dick Biel), the conservative head of St. Trinian's, but finds an ally in fellow professor Mark Hammond (Ric Randig). Meanwhile, the killer is still stalking the campus, picking off students one by one. Can Julie discover who the campus slasher is before it's too late?

This reasonably innocuous plot synopsis would suggest that Splatter University is nothing more than a so-called "whodunit," but the details that fill in the story are indicative of a film fully aware of what can be done in the confines of horror (an oft maligned genre). For example:

The murder weapon in Splatter University - a knife - is concealed within a crucifix, hinting at the duality in Christianity between preaching peace and practicing war. This is one of many damning references to religious hypocrisy in Splatter University: during her first class, Julie asks the class to identify something they feel strongly about as a way of weaving sociology into their daily lives, and when a Priest observing the class reports to Father Jensen that the student - not Parker - offers up the subject of abortion, she is ordered into his office and given a proverbial "brow beating" for deviating from the "tried and true curriculum" at St. Trinian's. The jab at Reagan-era conservatism and religious intolerance of "hot button" issues is unmistakable, and Father Janson's attitude is consistent with that of a man unwilling to adapt to a social environment that no longer reflects his "traditional" lesson plans.

It is no coincidence that Haines places Janson in a wheelchair, symbolizing his inability to take action and be a "real" man of God (something that will be addressed below). Similarly, another Priest is noted by the students for having sexual "flings" with his students under the guise of "confession," and during one conversation with a amorous teen, the camera (from the priest's perspective) wanders up and down her body, a classic example of film as voyeurism. Another Priest is slyly named after Anthony Perkins, an intertextual nod to his role as Norman Bates in Psycho. The institution of faith is corrupt, potentially psychotic, or riddled with infirmity.

The critique of Ronald Reagan's "Happy America" in the 1980s - which in no way reflected the reality of unemployment, inflation, and increases in diseases like HIV - continues throughout Splatter University. It's simply easier for characters to ignore things like unexpected pregnancies, infidelity, teenage drinking, cheating, and even murder. Half of the characters are blithely unaware that their significant others are being killed, and their disappearance from the narrative often goes totally unnoticed, particularly by the students. A police presence, while occasionally referred to by Father Janson, are physically nonexistent in Splatter University. For Father Janson, the death of students and teachers is an "inconvenience," but should not disrupt the upright appearance of St. Trinian's.

It is worth noting that Splatter University was produced by Lloyd Kaufman (founder of Troma films), who is no stranger to incorporating relevant social commentary into films that, on the surface, appear to be little more than cheap exploitation. For example, The Toxic Avenger and The Class of Nuke 'Em High - which Kaufman co-directed with Haines - deal with growing anti-nuclear hysteria in the mid-to-late eighties, and similar critiques of war appear in Combat Shock and Troma's War. That Splatter University is not openly identified as a "Troma Team Production" is an attempt to allow its social commentary not to be tied to gratuitous nudity and extreme violence - which are generally absent in the film.

Other examples of social commentary tied to the "Me Generation," appear in smaller, visual gags, like a girl involved in a love triangle being murdered and dumped into a garbage bin marked "Consumer," where her corpse is pelted with beer cans by passing students. Similarly, Julie's attempts to quit St. Trinian's are met with indifference by Father Jensen (conveniently, Julie is seated near a trash can marked "Waste" in a similar graffiti stencil to the "Consumer" bin). Julie has failed the traditionalist Janson, and is no more use to him than common street trash. Another victim dies because she fails to notice the killer is "in the closet" ("AIDS Kills," anyone?). Clever sight gags like these make it clear that Haines knew exactly what he was doing, despite the apparent "crudeness" of Splatter University's mise-en-scene.

Splatter University also turns the frequently misogynistic slasher film on its ear by exposing the practice to a nearly parodic degree. Save for the doctor killed in the beginning (who is, for all intents and purposes, castrated by the killer), all of the victims in the film are female. Their punishment for sexual promiscuity does not, under any circumstances, extend to the equally culpable young men, who are portrayed as callous and indifferent. One student, upon discovering he impregnated his girlfriend, at first disbelieves her, and then leaves his car (they are at a Drive-In), and becomes angry that she won't "make out with him" when he returns. Despite sitting within three feet of his girlfriend, he fails to notice that her "coldness" is due entirely to being dead.

Additionally, Splatter University bucks the trend of having a "Final Girl" - already a well established trope in the "slasher" genre at this point - by killing off Julie before the film ends, leaving Mark to discover Father Janson is, in fact, Daniel Grayham, the escaped mental patient. The dual Janson / Grayham makes a half-hearted attempt to blame Mark for Julie's death, but in his haste to hide his own sin, he neglects to clean the knife before returning it to his crucifix, and the resulting blood - shades of the sin of Judas and the "blood of the lamb" - damns him to return to the insane asylum, where Grayham continues to rant about "those dirty, dirty whores." The critique of religious fundamentalism is unmistakable by the end of Splatter University: when the major religious figure in the film is equated to mental instability, we can draw no other conclusions.

Despite attempts to marginalize Splatter University as "just another slasher film," as though it was somehow devoid of merit, it is evident that the film is rife with subtextual commentary for audiences with well developed critical faculties. While it lacks the substantive body of scholarly work that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or the Friday the 13th series, one need only sharpen ones observational skills to dig beneath the surface, where a rich and untapped example of cinema-as-social-critique awaits, in Splatter University.



* Mine, clearly.

Hint: If you ever see me use the words "clearly" or "definitely," I am almost certainly lying. This essay is designed to gently mock a series of reviews I've been reading on another blog - which I choose not to identify for the sake of its author - that read like someone programmed "critic speak" into a computer and asked it to generate a series of reviews. It reflects, I'm afraid, a style of film criticism that is more concerned with sounding "educated" than actually saying anything, and totally lacks personality.


This little exercise exists too prove a point: I deliberately chose a film that could, if one wanted to try hard enough, make a mountain out of a molehill. It doesn't hurt that a film titled "Splatter University" has almost no shot of being taken seriously, and with good reason. While all of the elements listed above are in the film, the cumulative effect of their presence seems to be more accidental than deliberate, particularly because of how sloppy the climax of Splatter University is.

Since the other writer doesn't read this blog, I feel no need to link to it, as he wouldn't get the joke. The actual film falls... no, I wouldn't even say it falls between the original review and this one. However, to prove I'm not pulling this analysis out of my ass, here's a footnote that seems very close to what I wrote (and I didn't find this until after the review was finished).