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Eyes of Fire (1983) – OHMC 2022 Day 25

October Horror Movie Challenge 2022

Eyes of Fire (USA, 1983)

I only learnt of Eyes of Fire this year, which surprises me. While it reportedly had a very limited initial release, it still came out at a time when I was actively seeking out new horror films, reading fan magazines and constantly scanning the shelves at video shops. Yet somehow this one passed me by completely. Admittedly, it would be another decade before I developed a taste for folk horror, but the cover alone would have made this an instant rental. Let’s see what I’ve been missing for all these years.

Eyes of Fire is currently streaming on Shudder in the UK.

eyes of fire 1

Synopsis

Eyes of Fire takes place in Colonial America, in 1750. Fanny and Meg believe themselves to be the only survivors of a small backwoods settlement on the border between British and French territories. They have been picked up by French soldiers after straying into their grounds. We open as they tell their tragic story.

Fanny and Meg were part of a small group who fled a larger settlement after the preacher, Will Smythe, was accused of living in sin with two women. Smythe narrowly avoided being hanged for this when the rope snaps. This appears to be Leah’s doing, as she possesses an assortment of ill-defined psychic powers.

Despite being warned away by the local Shawnee people, the group take shelter in a remote valley. Abandoned cabins indicate that they are not the first white settlers to do so. The preacher is delighted when they find a young girl, apparently Shawnee, and decides he must convert her to Christianity. Leah is less pleased, however, as she can see the girl’s true demonic form.

With this serpent in their midst, the small community find themselves under escalating attack by supernatural forces. If any are to survive, they must uncover the dark secrets of the valley and the sinister witch who rules over all from the shadows.

eyes of fire 2

General Thoughts

Horror, like any other genre, goes through trends. Following the success of Stephen King’s Carrie in 1974, horror fiction and cinema was filled with children and young adults possessed of psychic powers. It’s something you don’t see much these days, so it’s oddly nostalgic to see the trope so prominent in Eyes of Fire. While Leah’s abilities eventually play a major role in the story, I did wonder at first if they had been shoehorned in to cash in on the trend.

Some of Leah’s visions could come from Twin Peaks. While Eyes of Fire presents a different kind of weirdness than Lynch, I can see the occasional parallel. Hell, there’s even a scene where the dialogue appears to have been recorded backwards and reversed it to make it sound off.

For something that looks and feels so much like a TV move of the early ’80s, it’s surprising when Eyes of Fire ventures into more adult areas. There is little gore, but late on in the film the spirits kill a cow and do things with its head. This is clearly not faked. Some of the spirits of the valley are naked when they appear, but unusually for the time, this is not presented in a titillating way at all. Even more unusually, the film is as casual about male nudity as female. It’s really quite refreshing in this respect.

It was interesting watching Eyes of Fire so soon after Luz: The Flower of Evil. While the two films are utterly different in tone and execution, they touch upon similar themes of the duality of good and evil in nature. Early on, a trapper reminds us “Everything that’s good has an evil side to it,” and “The devil is as natural as a brook or a tree.”

eyes of fire 3

Verdict

Sometimes a film comes along that utterly confounds me. I really don’t know what to make of Eyes of Fire. Hell, I’m not even sure if I liked it. Even so, it’s unique enough that I’m at least glad to have watched it.

While I’m guessing Eyes of Fire was shot on a shoestring, it doesn’t always look cheap. The sets and costumes are largely convincing. They are helped enormously by the rustic and often beautiful locations, which sell both the period and remoteness of the community well.

The visual effects are never less than interesting. While some are cheaply done and obvious in their execution, such as the witch kneeling down into a trench to vanish, they are executed imaginatively. There are also a surprising number of explosions for what is largely a sedate film. When the settlers take up arms against the spirits, the entities explode like petrol bombs when shot. It is a genuinely odd sequence, reminiscent of the exploding aliens from Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon.

Tonally, Eyes of Fire is all over the place. It seems to have aspirations of serious drama but is oddly campy. This may not have been deliberate. Part of the unevenness is down to the wildly different abilities of the cast. Some sell their roles well, even when given ludicrous things to say and do, but Dennis Lipscomb’s performance as the preacher seems to have been plucked off the stage of a high-school production of The Crucible.

The biggest problem with Eyes of Fire, however, is the editing. Scenes chop and change so abruptly that I kept being taken out of the film as I tried to work out what the hell was going on. While this doesn’t quite render the story incoherent, it does present an unnecessary impediment. Apparently, there is an extended cut, titled Cry Blue Sky, which restores 30 minutes of footage. I’m tempted to watch it to see if it solves some of these problems.

Mainly, I wonder if Eyes of Fire was simply ahead of its time. If it had been made today, would it have been handled more like an A24 film than a straight-to-video cheapie? There are some engaging ideas and unusual storytelling here, but picking them out from the general chaos takes real work.

The October Horror Movie Challenge

Please do join in and share your own thoughts with us about this or any other films as the month goes on. You can usually find us on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, or lurking in the dark corners of your home.

If you would like to play along at home, my provisional selections are:

  1. Werewolves Within (USA, 2021)
  2. Crystal Eyes (Argentina, 2018)
  3. Super Dark Times (USA, 2017)
  4. Thirst (Australia, 1979)
  5. A Ghost Waits (USA, 2020)
  6. Cemetery of Terror (Mexico, 1985)
  7. I Came By (UK, 2022)
  8. 100 Monsters (Japan, 1968)
  9. Sea Fever (Ireland, 2020)
  10. Mill of the Stone Women (Italy, 1960)
  11. Glorious (USA, 2022)
  12. All the Moons (Spain, 2021)
  13. Broadcast Signal Intrusion (USA, 2021)
  14. Incantation (Taiwan, 2022)
  15. The Gore Gore Girls (USA, 1972)
  16. Luz: The Flower of Evil (Colombia, 2019)
  17. Butterfly Kisses (USA, 2018)
  18. The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (Italy, 1971)
  19. Saloum (Senegal, 2021)
  20. The Addiction (USA, 1995)
  21. Good Madam (South Africa, 2021)
  22. The Freakmaker (UK, 1974)
  23. The Long Walk (Laos, 2019)
  24. Eyes of Fire (USA, 1983)
  25. Errors of the Human Body (Germany, 2013)
  26. Caveat (Ireland, 2020)
  27. The White Reindeer (Finland, 1952)
  28. His House (UK, 2020)
  29. Tourist Trap (USA, 1979)
  30. Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Sweden, 1922)
  31. Flux Gourmet (UK, 2022)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.

If you dig through the archives, you will also find episodes about a wide variety of horror stories and games. Happy nightmares!

Errors of the Human Body (2019) – OHMC 2022 Day 24

October Horror Movie Challenge 2022

Errors of the Human Body (Germany, 2013)

Errors of the Human Body has been on my watchlist since I first saw it mentioned some 10 years ago. While I deliberately avoided reading too much about it, the premise of genetic engineering and a title that recalls early Cronenberg piqued my interest. And although it looked more like a science fiction film, the hope of some body horror was enough for me to include it this year.

Errors of the Human Body is currently streaming on Shudder in the UK.

errors of the human body 1

Synopsis

Dr Geoff Burton takes a new research position at a genetics institute in Germany. In particular, he is researching a unique disorder that killed his infant son shortly after birth. This tragedy and his reaction to it led to the loss of his previous job and the collapse of his marriage.

At the institute, Burton reconnects with Rebekka Fiedler, a former student who is now a ground-breaking researcher herself. The two are former lovers, a situation that was fraught with ethical concerns at the time. Regardless of any residual guilt, they soon become intimate again.

Fielder is working on what she has dubbed the “Easter gene” — a change to the genome of axolotls that allows them to regenerate severed limbs at almost visible speed. While she had been working with Jarek Novak, a rather creepy and stalkerish colleague, the two have had a falling out and are supposedly pursuing different avenues of research. In practice, Novak is stealing Fielder’s work and adapting it for use on mammals.

When Burton investigates this by stealing samples from Novak’s lab, he accidentally infects himself with a virus engineered to introduce the mutation into the genomes of mice. As Burton becomes more and more unwell, he must try to uncover whether the changes he is undergoing are a boon or a death sentence.

What precisely does the Easter gene do? Will Burton survive the changes he is going through? And what does all of this have to do with his own research?

errors of the human body 2

General Thoughts

As protagonists go, Burton is a bit of an arsehole. The institute is filled with eccentric characters, and it’s not unreasonable that some might rub anyone up the wrong way, but Burton seems to go out of his way to be rude and hostile to everyone. This is clearly meant to be an expression of his pain, and he isn’t wholly unsympathetic. Still, it is difficult to root for him and his predicament, which undermines what is otherwise a poignant ending.

While the premise and title invite comparisons with Cronenberg, Errors of the Human Body feels very different from his work. For all the emotional dysfunction and mad science, there is a fundamental weirdness missing from this film. It never really makes us uncomfortable, even in its rare scenes of body horror. The closest we get to that shock of the weird is when Burton has a fever dream in which he hallucinates himself bleeding mice. A little more of such inventiveness might have gone a long way.

It was interesting to see Rik Mayall here, in what would be one of his last film appearances. When I saw his name in the credits, I wondered if he might be the comic relief. Instead, we see him as the head of the institute, playing the role absolutely straight. This turns out to be an inspired piece of casting.

errors of the human body 3

Verdict

For a film about weird viruses that takes in mad science, body horror and fevered hallucinations, Errors of the Human Body is surprisingly dull. The core concept is interesting enough but it feels underdeveloped. While there is an excellent payoff, getting there is a plodding journey. There is more time invested in the politics of academia than the more imaginative aspects of the story. The last act in particular has terrible pacing, with Burton just wandering around Dresden looking ill for much of the time.

While the weirder aspects of this film may be understated, the visual effects are nicely handled. The progression of Burton’s illness is handled relatively subtly, with small skin lesions blossoming into clusters of tumours. It feels uncomfortably realistic in a way something more overblown might not. The location of the institute also adds much to the film. Its antiseptic corridors and oddly claustrophobic clinical rooms feel real but are just odd enough to keep us off-balance.

Ultimately, however, Errors of the Human Body doesn’t feel like much of anything. As a drama, it’s too superficial. The virus and its effects aren’t weird enough to carry it as science fiction or horror. And if this is meant to be a technothriller, it really should be more thrilling. There are some strong emotional notes, especially towards the end, but they are geared more to making us sad than frightened. All in all, Errors of the Human Body is a painfully, forgettably average film.

The October Horror Movie Challenge

Please do join in and share your own thoughts with us about this or any other films as the month goes on. You can usually find us on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, or lurking in the dark corners of your home.

If you would like to play along at home, my provisional selections are:

  1. Werewolves Within (USA, 2021)
  2. Crystal Eyes (Argentina, 2018)
  3. Super Dark Times (USA, 2017)
  4. Thirst (Australia, 1979)
  5. A Ghost Waits (USA, 2020)
  6. Cemetery of Terror (Mexico, 1985)
  7. I Came By (UK, 2022)
  8. 100 Monsters (Japan, 1968)
  9. Sea Fever (Ireland, 2020)
  10. Mill of the Stone Women (Italy, 1960)
  11. Glorious (USA, 2022)
  12. All the Moons (Spain, 2021)
  13. Broadcast Signal Intrusion (USA, 2021)
  14. Incantation (Taiwan, 2022)
  15. The Gore Gore Girls (USA, 1972)
  16. Luz: The Flower of Evil (Colombia, 2019)
  17. Butterfly Kisses (USA, 2018)
  18. The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (Italy, 1971)
  19. Saloum (Senegal, 2021)
  20. The Addiction (USA, 1995)
  21. Good Madam (South Africa, 2021)
  22. The Freakmaker (UK, 1974)
  23. The Long Walk (Laos, 2019)
  24. Eyes of Fire (USA, 1983)
  25. Errors of the Human Body (Germany, 2013)
  26. Caveat (Ireland, 2020)
  27. The White Reindeer (Finland, 1952)
  28. His House (UK, 2020)
  29. Tourist Trap (USA, 1979)
  30. Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Sweden, 1922)
  31. Flux Gourmet (UK, 2022)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.

If you dig through the archives, you will also find episodes about a wide variety of horror stories and games. Happy nightmares!

The Long Walk (2019) – OHMC 2022 Day 23

the long walk poster
October Horror Movie Challenge 2022

The Long Walk (Laos, 2019)

I reviewed Mattie Do’s directorial debut, Dearest Sister, back in 2020’s October Horror Movie Challenge. While I wasn’t entirely sold, it was promising enough that I wanted to see where Do’s career might head. Then “Drug Traffic”, a segment of the Creepshow TV series written by Do and Christopher Larsen, her husband and regular collaborator, proved a fun and bloody romp. So when I saw Do had another feature available to stream, it went straight on my list for this year.

The Long Walk is currently streaming on Shudder in the UK.

The Long Walk 1

Synopsis

Our protagonist, whose name we never learn, is a hermit in his early sixties. He lives alone in his old family home in rural Laos, salvaging scrap metal and selling it at a nearby village. The only thing that seems important to him is the roadside shrine he maintains. Oh, and the dead woman who follows him around.

His ghostly companion was killed in a road accident some 50 years before. Our protagonist stumbled across her in her final moments and kept her company as she died. They have become inseparable since then, although the young woman never speaks.

This ghost seems to exist outside time, providing a direct connection between the present day and our protagonist’s childhood. When she moves between these times, she can take our protagonist with her, allowing the older man to go back and try to repair some of the trauma of his childhood.

These attempts largely centre on the protagonist’s mother, who is dying of a chest ailment. His wastrel father drinks the family’s meagre funds away before running off to the capital in search of work, leaving his wife to die alone. Each time our protagonist tinkers with this past, however, some of the details change. But is anything actually improving?

Why is the ghost of this young woman bound to our protagonist? What is her motivation for moving him through time? And our are protagonist’s intentions really as wholesome as they appear?

The Long Walk 2

General Thoughts

The Long Walk is largely set some 50 years in the future, with flashbacks to our present day. This is handled relatively subtly, however. We see the occasional piece of futuristic technology, but daily life in rural Laos seems largely unchanged between the eras. As someone who can remember what life was like 50 years ago, this strikes me as fairly realistic. Not every part of the world is as affected by change as we might imagine.

Our protagonist does not hide his ability to see the dead and the people around him largely accept it. The police and a number of supporting characters enter the story because they want him to find the body of a missing woman, who they presume is dead. The protagonist’s matter-of-factness about his abilities is refreshing. When the daughter of the missing woman is surprised just to be given a written note instead of the séance she was expecting, he asks her, “Was that not enough of a show for you?”

The ghosts of The Long Walk operate by a different set of rules than we might expect, even beyond their strange relationship with time. While only certain people can see them, they appear to be very corporeal. They are largely uninterested in the kinds of active haunting we usually see in films, simply standing around in silence. While this is still eerie, they don’t seem to want to scare people.

Verdict

As I’d hoped, The Long Walk sees Mattie Do and Christopher Larsen hitting their stride. This is a strange, beautiful film, rich with imagination and darkness. It has been a long time since I have seen an Asian ghost story that so neatly avoids all the clichés of the genre. Everything about The Long Walk feels fresh and original.

While my synopsis might make The Long Walk sound sentimental or even uplifting, it very much is not. I have held back a number of important plot points to avoid spoilers. This is a story that will draw you in and then hurt you. It is tender at times, with beautifully observed characters, and it lulls you into forgetting that you are watching a horror film. When the time comes for things to turn nasty, however, it does not hold back.

Appropriately, perhaps, The Long Walk is long for a horror film, coming in at just under two hours. Despite this length and its comparatively gentle pace, it is never less than completely engaging. Between the simple beauty of its setting, the strong performances from all the cast, and the growing sense of unease about where things might be heading, I barely noticed the time passing.

I’m not sure if The Long Walk will be my film of the month, but it’s definitely going to haunt me for some time.

The October Horror Movie Challenge

Please do join in and share your own thoughts with us about this or any other films as the month goes on. You can usually find us on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, or lurking in the dark corners of your home.

If you would like to play along at home, my provisional selections are:

  1. Werewolves Within (USA, 2021)
  2. Crystal Eyes (Argentina, 2018)
  3. Super Dark Times (USA, 2017)
  4. Thirst (Australia, 1979)
  5. A Ghost Waits (USA, 2020)
  6. Cemetery of Terror (Mexico, 1985)
  7. I Came By (UK, 2022)
  8. 100 Monsters (Japan, 1968)
  9. Sea Fever (Ireland, 2020)
  10. Mill of the Stone Women (Italy, 1960)
  11. Glorious (USA, 2022)
  12. All the Moons (Spain, 2021)
  13. Broadcast Signal Intrusion (USA, 2021)
  14. Incantation (Taiwan, 2022)
  15. The Gore Gore Girls (USA, 1972)
  16. Luz: The Flower of Evil (Colombia, 2019)
  17. Butterfly Kisses (USA, 2018)
  18. The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (Italy, 1971)
  19. Saloum (Senegal, 2021)
  20. The Addiction (USA, 1995)
  21. Good Madam (South Africa, 2021)
  22. The Freakmaker (UK, 1974)
  23. The Long Walk (Laos, 2019)
  24. Eyes of Fire (USA, 1983)
  25. Errors of the Human Body (Germany, 2013)
  26. Caveat (Ireland, 2020)
  27. The White Reindeer (Finland, 1952)
  28. His House (UK, 2020)
  29. Tourist Trap (USA, 1979)
  30. Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Sweden, 1922)
  31. Flux Gourmet (UK, 2022)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.

If you dig through the archives, you will also find episodes about a wide variety of horror stories and games. Happy nightmares!

The Mutations/The Freakmaker (1974) – OHMC 2022 Day 22

the mutations film poster
October Horror Movie Challenge 2022

The Mutations (UK, 1974)

When I first spotted The Freakmaker listed on Shudder, I thought the poster looked familiar even if the name wasn’t. It wasn’t until I googled it that I realised this was the British film known as The Mutations, which I’d been meaning to watch for a very long time.

I dimly remember being frightened by stills from The Mutations as a child. While I have no idea if I actually read anything about the plot, the images of the film’s monstrous hybrids were the literal stuff of nightmare to nine-year-old me. I was too young to see the film at the time, but I hoped to catch up with it one day. Well, it’s taken the best part of 50 years to do so.

The Mutations is currently streaming on Shudder in the UK.

The Mutations 1

Synopsis

Professor Nolter (Donald Pleasance) is a mad scientist. If you couldn’t work this out from his constant babble of pseudoscience, the German accent would be a dead giveaway. I’m not sure mad scientists were allowed to be anything other than German in British films of this era.

In particular, the professor is obsessed with creating plant/human hybrids. This is going to end world hunger or something, although this isn’t the kind of film to worry about specifics. The professor relies on Lynch (a pre-Doctor Who Tom Baker), a brutish circus owner, to find involuntary test subjects for his experiments in mutation. Because London is such a small town, the first victim turns out to be one of the professor’s offensively groovy students.

The relationship between the professor and Lynch is a fractious one, built on shaky foundations of mutual convenience and lies. Lynch was born with congenital facial deformities and the professor has promised to cure these once he has full control of the human genome. This will be any day now. Until then, however, the professor pays Lynch in failed experiments he can add to his freak show.

Yes, a big part of this film revolves around what was, even in 1974, an anachronistically awful freak show. We join the performers on and off stage as they rail against the indignities perpetrated upon them by Lynch.

Inevitably, we end up with a cycle of students going missing, other students looking for them, and these students going missing in turn as the professor transforms them into creatures beyond recognition. So how long will it be before the professor’s experiments rise up and turn against him? Around 92 minutes, if the listed runtime is to be believed.

The Mutations 3

General Thoughts

Despite being a zero-budget exploitation film, The Mutations was the final directorial outing for Jack Cardiff. Best known as a cinematographer, he had worked on films like The African Queen, The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus. The 1970s were clearly not kind to Cardiff if he found himself reduced to this. There is some artistic ambition in the time lapse photography of the title sequence, but the rest of the film is a mess.

The pseudoscience in The Mutations is going to give any actual scientist an aneurysm. It is full of pontification about how scientists have no idea how mutations happen, along with thoughts about “The mysterious essence known as nucleic acid”. There is some inexplicable connection between Einstein’s work and the creation of plant/human hybrids. At one point, Professor Nolter unironically quotes Lysenko. Most entertainingly, he demonstrates a ray gun that allows him to reverse “fungal putrefaction”. Most impressively, however, the professor randomly pitches Jurassic Park during one of his lectures some 15 years before Michael Crichton wrote the first line of it.

In a film that already had the shelf-life of fresh fish, the freak show scenes have aged worst. The screenwriters were clearly influenced by Todd Browning’s notorious 1932 film Freaks, casting former freak show performers as Browning did, and even lifting some scenes wholesale. The sequence where we watch the show itself, along with the audience’s braying reactions, makes for especially uncomfortable viewing.

It was interesting to see the performer known as Popeye, however. As the stage name suggests, his schtick was to pop his eyeballs out of their sockets. I remember reading about him in Ripley’s Believe it or Not! as a kid, although I’d never considered there may be footage of his act out there.

The Mutations 4

Verdict

In most respects, The Mutations is the worst kind of B-movie schlock. It is cheap, exploitative and doesn’t have an original idea to call its own. The dialogue is terrible, the acting wooden, and everything is so silly as to beggar belief. It’s a bit too nasty to be campy fun and it’s not good enough to be a cult classic. And yet for all these faults, it remains perfectly watchable.

The main saving grace is that The Mutations is never dull. While almost every aspect of the story is painfully obvious, it’s daft and weird enough to engage. At heart, this is a 1950s monster movie given a coating of ’70s sleaze.

The costumes and makeup effects may not win any Oscars, but they’re surprisingly effective given how cheap the film looks. A little imagination goes a long way, and the creature design is the only place you’ll find any real imagination here. It’s possible that their cheapness actually helps, as their lack of symmetry and unnatural proportions make the monsters oddly unsettling.

I am not going to suggest for a moment that you drop everything and watch The Mutations now. There are plenty of horror films that would be better uses of your time. But if, late one night, you find yourself in the mood for something cheesy and all rough edges, you could do worse.

The October Horror Movie Challenge

Please do join in and share your own thoughts with us about this or any other films as the month goes on. You can usually find us on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, or lurking in the dark corners of your home.

If you would like to play along at home, my provisional selections are:

  1. Werewolves Within (USA, 2021)
  2. Crystal Eyes (Argentina, 2018)
  3. Super Dark Times (USA, 2017)
  4. Thirst (Australia, 1979)
  5. A Ghost Waits (USA, 2020)
  6. Cemetery of Terror (Mexico, 1985)
  7. I Came By (UK, 2022)
  8. 100 Monsters (Japan, 1968)
  9. Sea Fever (Ireland, 2020)
  10. Mill of the Stone Women (Italy, 1960)
  11. Glorious (USA, 2022)
  12. All the Moons (Spain, 2021)
  13. Broadcast Signal Intrusion (USA, 2021)
  14. Incantation (Taiwan, 2022)
  15. The Gore Gore Girls (USA, 1972)
  16. Luz: The Flower of Evil (Colombia, 2019)
  17. Butterfly Kisses (USA, 2018)
  18. The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (Italy, 1971)
  19. Saloum (Senegal, 2021)
  20. The Addiction (USA, 1995)
  21. Good Madam (South Africa, 2021)
  22. The Freakmaker (UK, 1974)
  23. The Long Walk (Laos, 2019)
  24. Eyes of Fire (USA, 1983)
  25. Errors of the Human Body (Germany, 2013)
  26. Caveat (Ireland, 2020)
  27. The White Reindeer (Finland, 1952)
  28. His House (UK, 2020)
  29. Tourist Trap (USA, 1979)
  30. Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Sweden, 1922)
  31. Flux Gourmet (UK, 2022)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.

If you dig through the archives, you will also find episodes about a wide variety of horror stories and games. Happy nightmares!

Good Madam (2021) – OHMC 2022 Day 21

October Horror Movie Challenge 2022

Good Madam (South Africa, 2021)

While I’m not as averse to spoilers as most, I do sometimes enjoy going into films completely blind. It can be a risk not even to be able to set an expectation for what kind of horror film you’re watching, but some of my favourite viewing experiences have begun like that.

So I put Good Madam on my list without knowing anything except the country of origin. I was intrigued to see what a modern horror film from South Africa would be like. Beyond that, I didn’t so much as read a synopsis or watch a trailer. Let’s see how that gamble paid off.

Good Madam is currently streaming on Shudder in the UK.

Good Madam 1

Synopsis

Good Madam takes place in an affluent suburb in modern-day South Africa. Tsidi is the single mother of a young daughter, Winnie. She has fallen out with her family over who should live in their shared home. With nowhere else to go, she turns to her estranged mother, Mavis, who works as a live-in maid. In particular, Mavis has spent decades working for Diane, a wealthy white woman in a very white suburb. Tsidi grew up here and has bad memories of her childhood.

While Mavis lives in Diane’s house, she is careful to remind her daughter and granddaughter that this is not their home. They are not to use any of Diane’s crockery, even though they share a kitchen, and they must remain quiet unless called for. When Tsidi challenges her mother by saying, “So we should pretend not to be here even though we are”, Mavis only agrees.

Now old and sick, Diane is largely an unseen presence in the women’s lives. Tsidi joins her mother in the constant work required to keep this large, empty house spotless. Only Mavis tends to Diane in her room, hurrying whenever Diane rings a bell. As Diane’s health worsens, strange manifestations occur throughout the house, hinting at a weakening between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Why are previous generations of servants buried in a private graveyard on the grounds? What is the meaning of the strange Ancient Egyptian inscriptions Tsidi keeps stumbling upon? And just what does Diane have planned as she prepares to enter the next world?

Good Madam 3

General Thoughts

As a white bloke who as never been to South Africa, I cheerfully admit to being out of my depth in trying to pick this film apart. I’ve read negative reviews from black critics who feel that this film is simply retreading old traumas rather than addressing them, especially given that the director is white. While this doesn’t seem to be a universal view, I feel very much unqualified to assess it.

I can still appreciate that this is very much a film about ownership. We have three generations of black women living in a house that will never be theirs. It is filled with carvings, sculptures and other artworks from across the continent, all now owned by a woman descended from colonists. Generations of servants are buried on the grounds, their bodies owned by their employers even into death. This is not a subtle metaphor.

For a while, I did wonder whether the film might be going in a different direction. It takes almost an hour for us to see Diane. Until then, we only hear her bell summoning Mavis to her room. I’d started to suspect that Diane had been dead for some time and a mere echo of her presence still ruled over the house, like the ghost of apartheid.

Good Madam 4

Verdict

Good Madam is certainly an unusual, beautifully crafted film with a lot to say. It did take some time for me to really engage with it, however. While I found myself admiring the skilful way it used sound and editing to create a creeping sense of dread, I grew impatient waiting for something to actually happen. Until about an hour in, I was wondering if this was really a horror film.

When the story finally shifts into gear, however, it proves worth the wait. There is an understated domestic horror here, reminiscent of films like Burnt Offerings and Skeleton Key. At the same time, iy i filled with political allegory about the lingering effects of apartheid in a post-colonial South Africa. The metaphors are obvious but handled deftly enough that I never felt smacked in the face by them.

I’m not sure if Good Madam will be to most horror fans’ tastes. While it is a powerful and even admirable film, it is sedate and rarely frightening. There are some unsettling moments and a real sense of dread but it is more interested in challenging than scaring us.

The October Horror Movie Challenge

Please do join in and share your own thoughts with us about this or any other films as the month goes on. You can usually find us on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, or lurking in the dark corners of your home.

If you would like to play along at home, my provisional selections are:

  1. Werewolves Within (USA, 2021)
  2. Crystal Eyes (Argentina, 2018)
  3. Super Dark Times (USA, 2017)
  4. Thirst (Australia, 1979)
  5. A Ghost Waits (USA, 2020)
  6. Cemetery of Terror (Mexico, 1985)
  7. I Came By (UK, 2022)
  8. 100 Monsters (Japan, 1968)
  9. Sea Fever (Ireland, 2020)
  10. Mill of the Stone Women (Italy, 1960)
  11. Glorious (USA, 2022)
  12. All the Moons (Spain, 2021)
  13. Broadcast Signal Intrusion (USA, 2021)
  14. Incantation (Taiwan, 2022)
  15. The Gore Gore Girls (USA, 1972)
  16. Luz: The Flower of Evil (Colombia, 2019)
  17. Butterfly Kisses (USA, 2018)
  18. The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (Italy, 1971)
  19. Saloum (Senegal, 2021)
  20. The Addiction (USA, 1995)
  21. Good Madam (South Africa, 2021)
  22. The Freakmaker (UK, 1974)
  23. The Long Walk (Laos, 2019)
  24. Eyes of Fire (USA, 1983)
  25. Errors of the Human Body (Germany, 2013)
  26. Caveat (Ireland, 2020)
  27. The White Reindeer (Finland, 1952)
  28. His House (UK, 2020)
  29. Tourist Trap (USA, 1979)
  30. Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (Sweden, 1922)
  31. Flux Gourmet (UK, 2022)

A Final Note

If you have been enticed here by these posts, please do look around at some of our other film reviews. We also have a podcast, called The Good Friends of Jackson Elias, which occasionally covers horror films. If this appeals, you might want to check out some of the following episodes.

If you dig through the archives, you will also find episodes about a wide variety of horror stories and games. Happy nightmares!

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