Horror fans can be neglectful bastards.

Howdy folks, feels like it’s been a while.  I’ve been away, relaxing, seeing the family, and apart from watching a couple of films I’ve meant to see for ages (Hancock and The Invention of Lying, if you’re interested), keeping out of the loop and neglecting my duties as a film blogger.  Concentrating on other things (most recently, wondering at what point in the deterioration of a frying pan one should replace it).  But I’m back now, so no more complacency, time to get back in the saddle.  And what better way to do just that than by continuing in my Dario Argento odyssey, as promised in my post How one DVD label...

So that’s what I’m doing.  Last night I watched, for the first time, Two Evil Eyes.  Released in 1990, the film consists of two stories, each more or less an hour in length, based on Edgar Allan Poe tales.  The first, The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar, was directed by George A. Romero, and stars 80s screen icon Adrienne Barbeau.  Argento directs the second story, an adaptation of The Black Cat with Harvey Keitel in the lead role.  I’ve long been aware of the film, and it is discussed in the documentary Master of Horror, and I was surprised at how good it is.  Why surprised?  I guess I was expecting for there to be a reason for the film having been largely overlooked and neglected by genre fans.  And it has, despite the reliable source material, despite the starring names, despite it being the work of two of modern horror’s most respected heavyweights.  But goddamn, it’s a cool flick.  Romero’s section is a slow-burning creeper, an EC comic-style morality tale which would not have felt out of place in his 1982 film Creepshow.  Romero’s story (one of the best of many adaptations of The Black Cat) is wall-to-wall insanity, with nutbags dream sequences, all out carnage and Keitel chewing the shit out of the scenery.

Yet you’re not gonna see it on many horror fans’ top ten lists, and I don’t know why.  See, it’s not one of those little cult films that, though brilliant, just never got the exposure necessary to make people aware of its existence, there’s a million of them.  It’s a film that horror nuts are aware of, but not one that they get all giddy over.  Perhaps it’s simply because of the two-story format.  Not since the Amicus anthologies of the 60s and 70s have horror compendiums appealed to large audiences, and studios have long been suspicious of their potential.  The idea also means that Two Evil Eyes is neither entirely a Romero film nor an Argento one.  Maybe the time the film was made works against it.  Romero’s previous film Monkey Shines was neither a critical nor commercial success, and the same goes for Argento’s Terror at The Opera (though it is now considered one of his true classics).  Maybe there exists no singular reason for the ignoring of Two Evil Eyes, perhaps it’s simply a twist of fate which leaves certain films somewhat forgotten.  And there are others.  One that comes to mind is 1979’s When a Stranger Calls, which more or less invented the calls-coming-from-inside-the-house motif, and is up there with the very best stalked babysitter flicks.  Equally ignored is the surprisingly good 1993 sequel, When a Stranger Calls Back.  I suppose the 2006 remake could have exposed people to the original, had it not been geared towards younger popcorn audiences with no wider interest in the genre.  Remaking the film in the age of mobile phones?  Baaaaaaad idea, chum.  The Hitcher is another one.  Awesome film, neglected by horror fans.  Also suffered the remake treatment.  Hang on, is a pattern forming?  How about Fright Night?

Ah crap, some prick’s gonna try to remake Two Evil Eyes, aren’t they?

The Illegal Race Through America.

I had a beautiful 104 minutes the other day which I would like to tell you about, if you’ll spare me a moment.  A moment, you’ll be pleased to hear, briefer than the one required to read my last couple of posts.  Anyway, the five-score-and-four minutes in question were spent watching 1976 car chase caper The Gumball Rally, the movie of the race of the same name.  It’s a pretty cool film by the way, but the real beauty came, as it so often does, from the stirring up of childhood memories.

If you are able, now is the time to replicate the effect of travelling back into one’s memory banks.  Maybe squint a bit, maybe play a little harp.

When I was a particularly wee nipper, probably around 7 or 8, I watched a film with my older brother, and carried from it two vague but enduring memories.  One is of a car breaking cleanly in half as it crashes through roadworks, the other is my brother telling me the name of the film is ‘The Illegal Race Through America’.  Race?  America?  Illegal?  My young imagination was captured.  A few years ago, I decided to track the film down.

By the way I do realize you already know where this tale is headed, but I shall soldier on regardless, for I feel a need to get this out.  Sharing experiences y’know?  Planting seeds.

My long search for ‘The Illegal Race Through America’ took me on a pretty cool ride as, one by one, I ploughed through every American car chase film it could conceivably have been (I realized early on that my brother had been mistaken on the title).  Thus, I got to flavour the delights of Grand Theft Auto, Cannonball! and Gone in Sixty Seconds.  The flip side of the coin was of course The Cannonball Run which, while certainly no Smokey and The Bandit 3, is a pretty wretched sack of swill, oozing with slapstick characters, sped-up driving scenes and a severely past-his-best Burt Reynolds.  In short, it’s a homeless man’s Gumball Rally.  I watched each of these films and more, hoping beyond hope to see a car fall clean in two during a decidedly unlawful race across the Land of the Free, but ended up disappointed every time.  Particularly the time I watched The Cannonball Run. 

And then I tracked down The Gumball Rally.  And I watched it.  And I shuffled forward on my seat as a car approached some roadworks, and let me tell you friends, that car broke clean in two.  And this race was illegal, not to mention through America!  I sat and I smiled.  I had found the film.  Not to mention become somewhat of a connoisseur of American car chase films.