13th Floor, The (1988)

... aka: 13º, o Andar do Pavor (The 13th Floor of Dread)

... aka: Electrocutor 1

Directed by:

Chris Roache

Aussie producers David Hanney, Charles Hannah and Tom Broadbridge produced four genre films for the international video market in the late 80s. The best known as these now is James Bogle's Kadaicha (1988), which was re-titled Stones of Death for its U.S. video release and was given another chance at life thanks to inclusion in that popular Severin "All the Haunts Be Ours..." folk horror box set a few years back. And then there was Karl Zwicky's To Make a Killing (1988), a sharply-written, surprisingly nasty coming of age drama / home invasion horror, which was appropriately re-titled VICIOUS! (1988) for video and deserves another look. Brian Trenchard-Smith's Out of the Body (1989), which involves a psychic's search for a serial killer, hasn't seemed to build up any kind of reputation whatsoever over the years and is the most difficult of these to find. And then we have The 13th Floor, which was a very well-circulated tape here in American and is still easy to find now on numerous streaming sites since Umbrella Entertainment is handling it. It's currently doing the rounds on Shudder.

At a high rise construction site, young Heather Thompson (Kylie Clare) witnessed her father, Robert (Tony Blackett), and two of his goons kill a man who owed them money, along with the man's young son, who was electrocuted. Twelve years later, now-grown Heather (Lisa Hensley) may have blocked out all of the details from that fateful evening, but the psychological scars remain. As a result, she fell in with the wrong crowd, started doing drugs, dropped out of college and is now living on the streets.

Heather's evil father wants her back home ASAP, not necessarily because he's worried about her but because he's now running for political office and fears what having a troublesome daughter is going to do to his reputation, and thus his chances at winning the upcoming election. Not only that, but prior to running away Heather stole some potentially-incriminating documents that could get him into a lot of trouble. Robert hires sadistic private detective Brenner (Vic Rooney), who has a reputation for violence and getting desired results whatever the means, to find her and the documents.

A completed and functioning high rise building now stands at the same site of the previous murders, only use of the 13th floor (the exact spot of the deaths) has been prohibited. Any business that has attempted to set up shop there in the past has been plagued by problems, namely electrical ones. Since they need a place to stay, Heather, who's now clean, and her best friend Rebecca (Miranda Otto), who's still using, decide to make the 13th floor their new home. They receive help from a friend named Nick (Paul Hunt), who's recently gotten a job there as a night shift janitor. He swings by after hours to bring them food, wine, a TV, pillows and such, and even sneaks some naps in. The girls find another ally in John Burke (Tim McKenzie), who works in the social security office there. He takes such a fancy to Heather that he's willing to break the law and falsify documents just so she can collect a welfare check under an assumed identity.

Brenner ends up catching up to Heather outside the building late at night and chases after her. She eludes him long enough to fall into the clutches of chubby, horny, Schwarzenegger-worshiping live-in security guard Bert (Jeff Truman), who shows her his porn magazines and attempts to coerce her into going skinny dipping. Instead, she pushes him into the pool, steals one of his guns and runs back up to her 13th floor pad where Brenner is already waiting for her. He punches her, pins her down and tries to burn her with a lit cigarette, but she elbows him in the crotch and runs off. Since it's now 40 minutes into this and we've long ago forgotten this was supposed to be a horror film, it then comes as a mild surprise when electric bolts shoot out of a utility closet and Brenner falls to his death down the elevator shaft.

Some other stuff happens, but little of it has to do with the haunting. John's bossy, effete colleague keeps nosing into his business and almost busts him falsifying records, Heather and John have sex and Rebecca, who has an unrequited girl crush on her friend, get jealous and then later overdoses in the bathroom and the dad sends a bunch of violent thugs to break into Heather's records and rough John up. There's a surprise twist toward the end (that actually IS a surprise) and a lively final showdown, but it's difficult to make it there after an entire hour of slow-paced tedium.

One gets the impression that the writer / director wasn't particularly interested in making a ghost / horror movie but because that's the product the producers wanted, he kinda, sorta obliged. He mostly just made a drama here but the characters aren't particularly likable or interesting, the plot meanders and the supernatural stuff all feels like it's thrown on the side. And that's a real shame the first hour is mostly a slog because this eventually does go somewhere interesting. There's some style. It's often quite colorful (lots of blue, green, red, purple and neon) and visual stunning, thanks to cinematographer Stephen Prime. Performances are generally fine, though I'm not sure why every man looks like a broiled lobster. 

Though you'd never predict it watching her here, Otto became the breakout star and would go on to appear in several Lord of the Rings films, Spielberg's War of the Worlds, The Thin Red Line and many others. For some reason, there's also ample coverage given to an issue of the men's magazine Mayfair, which features future B-movie star Gail Harris / Thackray (SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE II) as the cover model.

In the U.S., this was given a VHS release from Paramount in 1990. Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Greece, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain and the UK also got to share our pain with a release of their own. If there's an official Blu-ray or DVD release, I'm not aware of it.

★★

Excitação (1976)

... aka: Excitation

... aka: Excitement

Directed by:

Jean Garrett

Born in Azores, Portugal as José Antônio Nunes Gomes da Silva, director Garrett settled in Brazil permanently in 1966, where he worked as a bookseller before opening an advertising / photography studio specializing in soap opera photo stories. That led to work as a still photographer, set dresser and actor on two short films made by Brazilian horror legend José Mojica Marins. These, "Ideologia" and "Pesadelo Macabro," ended up being used in the horror anthology features The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968) and Trilogy of Terror (1968). After a few more years doing photography and acting gigs for several other filmmakers, he moved up to assistant director on several films for Fauzi Mansur. By 1975, he was making his own films and, five years after that, had his own film production company. At the time, soft-core "pornochanchada" (crude comedies with lots of nudity and sex) were a dominant force in Brazilian cinema. Perhaps due to his previous association with Coffin Joe, Garrett (pictured below in a rare starring role in Ody Fraga's 1981 drama A Fêmea do Mar), ditched the comedy and made completely serious erotic films right out of the gate. Many of these proved to be just as successful as the comedic ones.

Garrett teamed up with David Cardoso, the most famous male star in these kind of films, for his first two efforts; the murder-mystery A Ilha do Desejo / "The Island of Desire" and the serial killer film Amadas e Violentadas / "Loved and Violated," which both ended up amongst the highest grossing domestic films of the year at the Brazilian box office. Excitação, his third effort out of eighteen total, was an attempt at a Gaslight-style psychological horror film, again with quite a bit of nudity.

The pre-credits sequence opens on a promisingly stylish, albeit minimalist, note. A mostly-empty white room. An open door. A red chair. A noose. A sweaty, nervous man eyeing said noose. The shots cut back and forth between all of the objects, with nicely composed images peering through the noose at the eventual suicide and an interesting comparison drawn between the Windsor knot on the man's necktie and the hangman's knot of the noose. That's followed by a long, unbroken shot of the camera strapped to the front of a car traveling down the beach until it settles on a small and very interesting-looking white beach house.

This home has just been purchased by wealthy engineer Renato (Flávio Galvão), who works at "one of the biggest computer companies in Latin America," and his troubled wife Helena (Kate Hansen), who inherited said company from her late father and thus technically owns it. Needing to get out of São Paulo due to Helena's recent nervous breakdown and stint in a mental institution, this isolated home seems like the perfect place for her to recuperate. Well, except for the fact it's the same location as the previous suicide. Arlete (Betty Saddy), the now-widowed previous occupant, sold them the home shortly after her husband Paulo's (João Paulo Ramalho) death but is still living nearby in one of their smaller homes. She becomes the wife's confidant and, uh, gets even closer with the husband.

Since Renato basically lives at work, he's not around when Helena is almost suffocated after smoke pours out of the shower nozzle instead of water. This sequence is not only the first of many to put her sanity into question but also one that shows the commercialized aspects of the film. Was it necessary to have panning shots up and down her body, or a close-up shot of her scrubbing her ass, or shots of her ecstatically massaging her breasts? Well, not really. Was it necessary to include that to sell movie tickets in Brazil in the late 70s? Probably. Though she seems to be enjoying herself at bath time, Helena hasn't been able to make love to her husband since leaving the hospital. And one really can't blame her. When she tells him about the shower incident, instead of sympathy she gets skepticism that it even happened.

Later that night, Renato encounters Arlete down at the beach clad only in a dress shirt and panties. She informs him that she regularly goes down there to talk to the sea. She finds it calming. He finds that interesting. Next thing you know the two are rolling around in the water making love, and they'll continue meeting down on the beach late at night for sex. Meanwhile, Helena is plagued by more weird events. The TV, showing some kind of Satanic cult ritual, keeps coming on all by itself and then an appliance / electronics theme starts to form as a blender pulverizes her smoothie by refusing to turn off, a fan almost scalps her and other things in the home (lights, a record player...) seem to take on a mind of their own. She also keeps seeing images of Paulo dead and hanging. And it may be no coincidence that Renato has brought a loaded gun into the home.

Against her wishes, Arlete's freewheelin', free-lovin' sexy younger cousin Ludmilla (Zilda Mayo) stops by unannounced for a protracted stay, which arouses feelings of jealousy from both women. She especially angers Arlete by flirting with Renato, tempting him by riding her motorcycle around on the beach wearing only a skimpy bikini and doing a long, crazy dance to Nazareth's "Go Down Fighting." Some voodoo practitioners are brought in to try to cleanse the home and there's also a nameless fisherman (Carlos Alberto Meni, also the production director) lurking around who seems to be keeping an eye on both homes.

While the drive-the-mentally-unstable-women-crazy script, co-written by Ody Fraga and the director, is ultimately pretty predictable even with the techie and supernatural embellishments, and the acting is mediocre at best (nice looking cast tho), many of the production qualities are quite good. The whole beach atmosphere, and use of the surrounding scenery, is very nice. The director proves to have an excellent visual eye when it comes to framing shots while cinematographer Carlos Reichenbach keeps the camera moving to give the film a sense of momentum and thus help along the slow-paced narrative.

The credits announce Liana Duval (who plays Joana the maid) and Abrahão Farc (who plays a detective) as the "guest stars," so I'm assuming they were known entities in Brazil at the time. Garrett, who passed away in 1996 at the age of just 50, also made a few other titles that could end up on here one day. Aside from the previously mentioned Amadas e Violentadas, there's also A Força dos Sentidos / "Force of the Senses" (1978), which is said to involve ghosts in some capacity, and O Beijo da Mulher Piranha / "Kiss of the Piranha Woman" (1985), a hardcore porn that involves a female vampire. None of the director's films have ever been officially released in the U.S.

Apparently fairly well received in its home country at the time, this won awards for Best Cinematography and Best Score (Beto Strada) from Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte (São Paulo Association of Art Critics). I was not able to find a single home video release for this anywhere in the world. The version I watched was taken from an airing on the Brazilian TV channel Canal Brasil and had fan-made English subtitles.

★★1/2