Arrebato (1980)

... aka: Rapture

Directed by:

Iván Zulueta

As a regular consumer of low budget and, some would say "low grade," horror, and also someone who genuinely enjoys such films for a whole host of reasons that have nothing to do with making fun of them, I have a bone to pick with this general premise. Why is it that any time a director wants to make a movie about another (fictional) director and wants to show said director is a troubled individual, they always make that person a horror director? And by "troubled," I mean the entire gamut of fucked up here. It could be a delusional person of limited to no talent, or someone who's just coasting through their profession, or someone who's not passionate about what they're doing, or someone who feels like they're "trapped" making these kinds of movies as if it's a ball-and-chain around their ankle, or a pervert, or a drug addict, or someone who's going insane, depressed, repressed, mentally defective in some way or even a psychotic killer themselves. Yup, it's always gotta be a horror director; the go-to profession for all manner of in-the-business downward spirals! 

The only other genre-specific directors I've seen treated with such disdain on a regular basis are pornographers. I suppose it's because these two genres are (more specifically were; things have thankfully changed in recent years) considered to be the lowest rung of the filmmaking ladder, at least from the vantage point of pretentious artistes. In reality, I think they mostly frown upon the fact these films are often blunt, honest and straight-forward instead of burying content under 50 layers of impenetrable metaphor.

The director in question here is José Sirgado (Eusebio Poncella), who already has such Naschy-esque titles as "La maldición del hombre lobo" under his belt, and is currently in the process of putting the finishing touches on his latest vampire epic, which is strangely titled "Wolf Men." It's clear from the get-go this man is just not feeling it anymore. Maybe he never really did. He's so stubborn and desperate to do something different that he's willing, per his own editor's evaluation, to screw up the new film ("meaningless cinema" he dubs it) in post just to do something, anything, out of the ordinary. "Fuck the movies," he says. And yet that obsession for making films is still clearly there, even if written off with passivity ("It isn't me who loves cinema, but cinema that loves me"). Maybe going through the paces as a filmmaker isn't so much a passion as it is a crutch; a place to hide.

José leaves the editing room and then drives through Madrid as a parade of theater marquees are shown; mostly famous movie titles, mostly films more successful and respected than anything he's ever done or likely will ever do. The director's career ambitions certainly aren't helped any by the fact he's also a heroin junkie, and that's the main driving force behind the entire structure and style of the film. It's the nonsensical rationalized through an unreliable narrator. Since he's always in some kind of altered state, the events that follow are assumed to be some kind of altered reality. This compounds that confusion by adding another (actual) narrator to the works; a hoarse, husky, nagging voice that's ever-present. Regular dialogue will unspool between characters and any bit of silence is used to wedge in another comment or insight from this narrator. Not only that, but this also screws around with the chronological timeline on top of that.

José's in a miserable relationship with another junkie, an actress named Ana (Cecilia Roth). Sometimes she's there, sometimes she's not. He wants to end it, and even rehearses the break-up in the elevator on the way up, but just hasn't yet, likely out of guilt because it was he who got her addicted in the first place. Returning to his unkempt apartment after work, the everyday stresses of life start getting to him. He can't wake a stoned Ana up (and later will strip her and attempt to rape her while she's still unconscious), the bathtub overflows, the toilet won't work, everything's a mess... On a more intriguing note, he's received a package containing a film reel, an audio tape and a key. He starts the tape. It's from an amateur filmmaker named Pedro (Will More) and his is the voice of the pretentious narration we hear throughout. José has only met Pedro twice previously. Now he wants to see him again and claims it's "urgent."

José is actually better acquainted with Pedro's bubbly cousin, Marta (Marta Fernández Muro), whom he used to date and who's also a drug addict. She chauffeurs him to the remote home where Pedro lives in seclusion with his aunt, Carmen (Carmen Giralt). Pedro's obsession is making 8mm movies. These aren't real movies, as in scripted movies, or even documentaries with a set purpose, but instead random, mundane home movies that he curiously refuses to show anyone else after he shoots them. Marta sometimes hears Pedro "crying in desperation" from outside his bedroom as he watches them and claims his emotional development is stunted at around 12-years-old even though he's 27. She adds that her ex-husband is the only person who has ever seen one of the films. Whatever he saw was so strange and disturbing that he never spoke to Pedro ever again.

After dinner, everyone sits down to watch TV. Carmen goes on a never-ending rant about how much she adores Alan Ladd, how perplexing it is that men like "fat" Mae West, how she hates black-and-white movies despite being color-blind herself and how dubbing makes people sound like chickens. Pedro lurks in the background staring José down and clutching a clown doll. The doll's eyes start to glow as he proceeds to fast-forward through hours of TV in just minutes. It's like he's able to control time. Or maybe José is just high again.

Later that night, the weird man-child turns up in José's bedroom unannounced to share some lines and talk. He claims he hates drugs because they make him feel grown up, yet is unable to sleep without some "powder," and adds that he doesn't get to have much sex either, yet sometimes gets to "...fuck my cousin and her husband, too" (!?) He eventually shows José some of his home movies, which seem to merely document everyday, ordinary life, yet at an accelerated frame rate and lacking the proper "rhythm" he's looking for. As he watches, Pedro starts sobbing, curls into a fetal position and clutches a teddy bear. Why is he refusing to grow up? Why is he filming his life instead of living it? He, just like José with his drug addiction, doesn't seem to be able to handle unaltered reality, or perhaps the reality of aging, stress and mortality. The voice-over attempts to shed some light about his search for "understanding the meaning, the purpose, the role, the game that 'making movies' represented." Also, major homoerotic vibes going on here, along with numerous accompanying wang shots.

This entire trip to Pedro's turns out to be a flashback, as does the next sequence, which details a second trip to the home. This time, José brings along Ana, and there are immediate arguments over the drugs that are starting to take over everyone's lives. There's also discussion about those little things that bring on, or used to bring on, intense feelings of pleasure or joy; things as simple as green slime, Betty Boop dolls and King Solomon's Mines comic books; things most of us associate with childhood. It's no coincidence that much of the soundtrack is comprised of sounds that bring to mind carnivals, music boxes, squeaky toys and other things of childhood merriment. Drugs, sex and movies are perhaps just adult attempt at being as enraptured by something in the face of maturity, life experience and cynicism.

The rest of the film returns to present as José and Ana watch the film reels Pedro sent to them. He left home the day after their last visit to experience life, and found little about it to actually enjoy. He began documenting his travels. The drug use continued. And then he accidentally recorded himself sleeping one night. An anomaly, a split second red frame, showed up in the footage. Subsequent attempts to film himself sleeping resulted in the red "pause" increasing in length. Believing this signified that his days were numbered, he and his gal pal Gloria (Helena Fernán-Gómez, who's dubbed by Pedro Almodóvar!) hit the streets to indulge their base fantasies, which include seducing a biker with promises of a three-way and then trying to (I think?) drink his blood. However, Pedro's illness worsens as he finds out some interesting things (best not described by me) about his camera...

Arrebato is the exact type of art house / transgressive / surreal / experimental / whatever-you-wanna-call-it "cult" film that interests me in some ways yet doesn't really work for me in its entirety. It may for you. Who knows? Watch it and find out for yourself. Some people, including a lot of critics, seem to love this and lavish it with praise. I found it to be a film that reaps some rewards, yet I'm not sure the patience and forgiveness required on my end to make it down this rocky road was fully justified by the actual content found therein. I also found some aspects extremely silly and unintentionally comic.

The drug and film addiction parallels as a means of adult cope are pretty in your face, and there's no escaping the fact this could have said the exact same things with a linear narrative, less self-indulgent blabber and minus the hideously unlikable characters you'd rather see get hit by a bus than given another second of time to inflict their dreary worldview upon you. I think this would have been far more compelling if the characters were sympathetic, fleshed-out a bit better, or actually worth getting to know. They're not. What's even the point of using drugs as a means to escape existential crises and recapture the brain-not-fully-developed joys of youth if all that does is make you even more miserable than before? Maybe the director was trying to paint self-important, nihilistic addicts and artists (even himself, as he was both) as insufferable killjoys who suck every ounce of joy out of a room.

In film, we often get to see the ravages of addiction on the addicts themselves, but seldom get to see the toll taken on those left to deal with the fallout. Whether in film or in real life, dealing with addicts is tedious. Hell, just being around someone who's drunk or high in any capacity when you're sober can be pretty tedious. It's especially tedious when you're around someone chemically impaired who also fancies themselves a philosopher and spouts a bunch of gibberish they think is deep and profound when it's really just shallow and semi-coherent. This film often feels like that; like you're trapped in a room with Stoned Sartre lecturing you for two hours about how life is meaningless.

Yes, this is two hours long and it's a long two hours. At one point it was actually three hours long until a merciful producer stepped in and forced the director to edit it. Seeing how what's left is insanely dialogue-heavy (between the characters and voice-overs, it's a near-constant stream of talk from beginning to end), moments of pause and reflection may have been what ended up on the cutting room floor.

Though often listed as a 1979 release on various websites (perhaps due to the fact the opening credits brag that it won a "special prize by the Ministry of Culture in the year 1979"), this actually didn't have its official premiere until June 9, 1980 at the Azul Cinema in Madrid. Though it was not initially successful, it would become a popular midnight / cult film in Spain later on and reportedly played at one theater for an entire year.

Here in America, this played at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1980, had a very limited run in 1982 and then vanished for decades without ever making its way onto home video until it was 30 years old. There was a 4k restoration in 2021, followed by another limited run in select theaters. It was given a Blu-ray release by Altered Innocence in 2022 and finally earned the ultimate film snob seal of approval when it was streamed by The Criterion Channel that same year.

★★1/2

Shadowed Mind, The (1988)

Directed by:

Cedric Sundström

Forget white-walled, sterile facilities in major cities with state-of-the-art equipment and a staff of competent professionals, or even quaint brick buildings with well-manicured lawns in the country, this particular psychiatric clinic is located inside a giant, remote warehouse with an always-locked, impenetrable front gate. Upstairs it's all cheap aluminum siding in cavernous, almost completely empty rooms with a few chairs for the cast to sit but down below we get crumbling stone archways and sleeping quarters tucked away in catacombs all lit up with bold, multi-colored lighting. Clearly, this place in no way reflects an actual clinic, which may or may not be a clue as to where this film is actually headed. One thing's established up front: This is a facility using experimental "treatments" on its patients, which involves a combination of group therapy, one-on-one sessions, mysterious pills and injections of multi-colored substances that are never explained. There are a lot of story elements here that are, shall we say, left open to interpretation.

Privately run, and up until now also financed by, Dr. Dieter Hildesheimer (Towje Kleiner), the unnamed clinic is awaiting approval on a million dollar government grant from the Foundation for Better Mental Health Care, which would conceivably enable them to expand their scope and treat more patients... granted that's even their intention. As it stands now though, they only have a small handful of patients who curiously don't appear to have benefited much from the doctor's methods.

As the film begins, the buxom, husky-voiced Stephanie (Adrienne Pearce) has just arrived. She's been shipped there by her father, who's embarrassed that his daughter has a compulsion to flash her breasts at nearly everyone she encounters. This has something to do with an obsession with her own mother's breasts ("If I couldn't have them, I had to see them!") and spying on mum having adulterous affairs ("My mother's exposure? Gloooooorious!") As we'll soon see, the rest of the bizarre patients at this place almost make Stephanie's exhibitionism and mommy fixation seem pretty mild by comparison!

There's the handsome but virginal Paul (Rufus Swart), who suffers from severe anger issues, emasculation nightmares, the inability to ever get an erection and "a stunted libido" that has "developed into a neurotic condition with psychotic undercurrents." All of that somehow had landed him in prison, though he's not willing to say for what. He's also not exactly who he claims to be and is scheming behind the scenes with the doctor. Speaking of "stunted," the soft-spoken, child-like and emotionally fragile Matthew (Simon Poland) was severely bullied as a boy and now clutches onto a teddy bear and channels all of his repression into obsessing over natural and spiritual matters. Oh yeah, and he also cut off his own dick at the age of 18 and now bemoans the fact no potential romantic partner will accept his "sexlessness."

A third patient, the pretty Julia (Hayley Dorskey), is also bitter about never being able to have a successful relationship, which seems to have something to do with childhood sexual abuse at the hands of an uncle which has, in turn, caused her to develop multiple personalities. A black man who goes by just General (Simon Sabela) doesn't seem to be a part of the rehab program at all and just wanders around dressed in military garb incoherently barking out orders. Is this all supposed to be some kind of warped, blackly comic parable about sociopolitical issues exclusive to South America in the late 80s? I'd say that's highly likely.

The clinic's additional staff is equally off-putting. Nurse Helen (Trish Downing), the doctor's full time assistant and part time lover, is cold, icy and driven almost exclusively by money and success. Some former patients now work there, including equal opportunity man-whore / orderly Kurt (Evan J. Klisser), whose mother died giving birth to him. As a result of that trauma, he may have been a serial killer who murdered "whores" in the city before being rehabilitated. Kurt has been sleeping around with whoever will have him, including the jealous Julia and the perpetually-tardy staff assistant Brenda (Debra Kaye). If that isn't enough, he also has eyes for a second female assistant - Alice (Jennifer Steyn) - and is secretly carrying on a booze-and-pill fueled same sex affair with fellow orderly Nick (Nicholas Ashley Nortier).

After one of Kurt's trysts, someone sneaks into Brenda's room and viciously stabs her to death. When the body is discovered the following morning, Dr. Dieter insists they don't get the police involved. If word gets out about what happened, there goes the clinic and there goes the financing. Because of his murderous past, Kurt is immediately suspected of the crime, but Helen enlists his aid in covering it all up and hiding the body. Kurt is soon removed from the suspect list himself after the same assailant knifes him to death in the shower. More murders will eventually follow and the clinic itself turns out not to be the place of care and healing that the staff profess it to be.

Some movies are so obviously flawed in so many different ways that you can't quite recommend them yet so uniquely weird in so many different ways they cannot be denied either. The Shadowed Mind is such a film. It's cheaply made yet also visually pleasing, completely preposterous yet enjoyably unpredictable and utilizes an overly-familiar murderer-in-a-nuthouse premise yet manages to make it seem somewhat fresh by setting things in a peculiar location with unique art direction, super stylized lighting and clever camerawork, and focusing on its strange characters and their even stranger psycho-sexual maladies. The bloody knife murders, sex and full-frontal nudity (male and female) will appeal to trash movie fans, the visuals are strong enough to rope in giallo buffs and the heavy homoeroticism (which goes just a bit beyond mere implication here) is pretty ballsy and also comes as a surprise for a film made in the late 80s.

Positives aside, this is still far from smooth sailing all the way through. It's very confusing to start, sometimes pretentious, often downright silly, riddled with unintentionally hilarious dialogue and features highly uneven acting, ranging from awkward, wooden and stilted (English doesn't appear to be the first language of several of the primary actors) to somewhat competent. Still, if you're looking for something a little out of the ordinary, this has you covered, and I respected what they were trying to do here even if they're not quite able to pull it all off.

Sundström, best known for making the third and fourth sequels in the American Ninja series, is the brother of director Neal Sundström (HOWLING IV: THE ORIGINAL NIGHTMARE; Slash). It was filmed entirely in South Africa with a mostly South African cast and crew, but was partially financed by Australian David Hannay and his namesake company. Hannay also turns up here in one scene as a potential investor in the clinic. One of the executive producers was Israeli-born Avi Lerner, who'd go on to become a top Hollywood producer with over 350 credits to his name to date. Most of the cast can be seen in other South African horror / trash films from this same time, like LETHAL WOMAN (1988), RETURN OF THE FAMILY MAN (1988) and HELLGATE (1989).

The Severin press release claims this was "immediately banned" by the South African government soon after it debuted. IMDb also (falsely!) claims that this was given a VHS release only in Panama (!) and that the film was given an NC-17 rating here in the U.S., which is strange considering it was never even given a release here until the 2022 Blu-ray, which is unrated.

★★1/2