El sombrerón (1950)

... aka: Man with the Giant Hat, The

Directed by:
Guillermo Andreu
Eduard Fleischmann

The only available print of this extremely rare Guatemalan film - one of the only (partial) horror films of 1950, one of the only horror films ever produced in Guatemala and supposedly the first theatrically-released film from that country - is only available in Spanish and only available in a really, really bad / dark / murky / heavily damaged print. Added to the opening credits are a statement that this was the first sound film ever produced in its home country (an IMDb search reveals that it's the earliest film from Guatemala period currently in their database) and was also shot on 16mm film. The same statement claims the film was donated by Eduardo Fleischmann, the credited photographer, producer and editor (IMDb and other sources also claim he co-directed though I didn't see him listed in the credits for doing so), in the late 1980s and had its picture reconstructed and sound restored at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico and the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala in 1990. I suppose they did the best they could with what they had to work with, but in its current shape, this isn't an easy film to sit through. And truth be told, few outside of very dedicated film buffs are probably going to even bother.

As far as the original credits are concerned, the film is in such bad shape that I had to import screen grabs of them into my photo editing program, do a reverse black-and-white image, hit "darken" about five times and then adjust the sharpness as far as it would go and even then I wasn't able to make them all out. Based on what I could read, I learned that this film is based on a radio theater drama about the legend of El Sombrerón (I'll get to that in a little bit) by José Luis Andreu Corzo. However, it doesn't just stick to that radio program or the specific legend itself but also incorporates elements from the book "Han de estar y estarán," which covers various Guatemalan stories and legends, by Francisco Barnoya Gálvez. Many songs are listed in the credits (yes, this is also - perhaps even primarily - a musical), including three by director Andreu.

El Sombrerón (or, loosely, 'The Man with the Giant Hat') is one of the most famous legends / folk tales in Guatemala. The character, sometimes referred to as Tzipitio, is a short vagabond dressed almost entirely in black who's either a goblin or a ghost, drags along mules or dogs everywhere he goes and wears an ornamental belt and, most notably, a very large hat. The fiend is obsessed with braiding hair and will braid the hair of horses and dogs while he waits for a receptive, long-haired, large-eyed young woman. Once he zeroes in on a target, he will serenade them with his silver guitar and beautiful voice until she gives in and lets him braid her hair. Afterward, El Sombrerón refuses to leave the woman alone. He will keep her up all night with his singing, haunt her by making appearances inside her home, throw dirt and rocks into her food so she cannot eat and basically hound her into an early grave. In the most frequently told tale, El Sombrerón menaces a girl named Susana, leading her parents to cut off all her hair and then have it blessed at a church in order to finally drive the boogeyman away. What this really is is a story designed to scare young women into obedience and keep them away from men, but that's another discussion entirely.

Art based on El Sombrerón runs the gamut from silly...

To fairy-tale like...

To macabre.

Things open with lots of hazy shots of the sky, clouds, trees and cows walking down a path while an entire song plays. A couple of guys; "El Pilar" ranch owner Don Ramón (played by co-director Andreu) and goofball Ciriaco (Paco Pérez), who speaks in an annoying squeaky "comic" voice like he's just hit puberty, argue about the cows. Ciriaco is then busted drinking milk and sleeping on the job, so Ramon sends over his mouthy young female housekeeper Rosalía (Sally Polantinos) to chew him out. While Rosalía washes clothes, a quarter of guys with guitars serenade her as the camera keeps tilting down to show their reflection in the water. Ciriaco is in love with Rosalía, but she doesn't seem that interested so he's hoping his persistence pays off. Elsewhere, a strange, creepy, nameless man with a huge mustache and an even larger sombrero (played by Octavio Paiz) goes to village priest Padre Juan (Julio Urruela) and tells him a long story about something that happened to him thirty years earlier. We then go into partially-narrated flashback mode, and it's a long flashback at that.

In the flashback scenes, a man named Santiago (Luis Rivera) and another guy (didn't catch the name but he's shown to be a mass murderer so we shall call him "Psycho" from here on out) both fall in love with the same woman (didn't catch her name but we shall call her "Floozy" from here on out). Santiago drowns his sorrows in booze at a local tavern and sings a mournful song, then decides to take his drunken ass to a fiesta where we catches "Floozy" and "Psycho" talking. After causing a scene, he's dragged off, tied up to some poles and gets slapped around by "Psycho" after he spits in his face. A friend of Santiago's pops in to club a guard over the head and the two escape into the woods. Meanwhile, "Floozy's" mother (María Luisa Aragón) goes to a monastery to pray and get advice from a monk and then returns home just in time to see "Psycho" stab her her daughter to death. Santiago vows revenge, chases "Psycho" down and the two get into a hilariously sped-up fight with knives, where one ends up dead. Things finally return to the priest and the strange man, where he's revealed to be a ghost, and then we catch up again briefly with Ciriaco, Rosalía and Ramón.

I don't know if it's the result of a butchered print or technical incompetence or what, but this has extremely bad camerawork, extremely haphazard continuity between shots and extremely bad editing. The camera frequently seems to be moving somewhere but suddenly cuts off mid pan and then we're suddenly onto something else. The photography is also as primitive as it gets. We're talking constant overexposure and under and over lit shots throughout; none of which are helped any by the awful source print but obviously would also be present even in a better-quality version. In my research, I did read an anecdote about Fleischmann and his wife supposedly editing the film in their backyard (?!) so maybe that explains it. Either way, this makes even films from the infancy of the silent era look technically proficient. The acting ranges from acceptable to terrible and there are numerous long takes of nothing that will try most people's patience. Add to that constant musical interludes breaking up the action and drama, and the film has a hard time finding any kind of rhythm or building up to much of anything.

Perhaps most disappointing of all is that this has almost nothing to do with the legend I spoke about a few paragraphs above. While this isn't the film's fault, I was still bummed I never got to see a black-clad dwarf goblin with a hair braiding fetish serenading and harassing naive young señoritas. I am however going to be a bit lenient in my scoring here because I don't feel I can give a completely accurate evaluation of the movie as I'm not fluent in Spanish and the print is in such bad shape. This also earns bonus points for being historically important and because it's at times an interesting look into a culture otherwise not represented otherwise at all in film during this same time. Some of the music is also pretty catchy, particularly the song / dance number performed at the party. Yes, I'm pretty much grasping at straws here.

★★

Savage Weekend (1979) [filmed in 1976]

... aka: Killer Behind the Mask, The
... aka: Upstate Murders, The

Directed by:
David Paulsen

Leaving her young son behind with her bitter, depressed ex-husband Greg (Jeffrey David Pomerantz), Marie (Marilyn Hamlin) decides to accompany her wealthy new stockbroker boyfriend Robert (James Doerr) to his upstate New York vacation home to watch some guys build a boat he's just commissioned. Marie's easy-going sister Shirley ("Kathleen Heaney" / Caitlin O'Heaney), Robert's sleazy married co-worker Jay (Devin Goldenberg) and the ladies' flamboyant gay third wheel of a friend Nicky (Christopher Allport) all come along as well. Ignoring a bat someone has nailed to the front door as soon as they get there, everyone gets to relaxing, nude sunbathing and pairing off to have sex. Little do they know but disturbed redneck Otis Crump (William Sanderson) in lurking around with his trusty binoculars. Years earlier, Otis was involved in a violent assault that involved beating a guy's head on a rock and then tying up a disinterested girl he had a crush on and branding an "H" right in the middle of her chest with a red hot iron. The "H" was meant to be a Scarlet Letter of sorts for "Whore" but Otis, well, he's not too bright.

Otis, who's in charge of building the boat, pays frequent visits to his father's grave to talk to the tombstone and gets enraged when he learns that Robert has brought Jay there to oversee construction because Otis is working too slow. Jay spends most of his time trying to get into Shirley's pants, which proves to be easier than he probably ever imagined. Richard tries to express his love to Marie, who's been numbed by a few rough turns in her life and finds herself instead drawn to gruff lumberman / single father Mac Macauley (David Gale), who seems to have a violent streak himself. All these people mix and mingle for nearly an entire hour before someone finally decides to slap on a creepy, bloody skull mask and kill everyone off. Though it takes awhile, there's death by strangulation / hanging, getting thrown out a window and impaled, a long needle jammed into a brain through the ear, table saw and chainsaw... and yet these prove to be the least interesting aspects of the film.

It's hard to imagine a less sympathetic group of characters than the ones featured here. Everyone casually cheats on whoever they happen to be with, poke fun at "Odious" right in front of his face and are all rather self-absorbed and elitist. The gay character beats up a couple of hick homophobes in a bar earlier on and later watches a couple have sex while mangling his own hand with barbed wife (?!) Marie is troubled by distracting violent and sexual visions throughout, with her former hubby acting as a sort-of mental cock block any time she finds herself in a sexual situation. During one scene, she suggestively fondles a milk cow's udder (?!) while trying to repress her urges to jump one of the guys. Bizarre as all this is, it's these offbeat character quirks that leave a greater lasting impression than the rather ho-hum horror scenes. It doesn't function all that well as a mystery either as the killer's identity is painfully obvious early on. However, inventive use is made of flash-forward in the misleading opening scene to try to throw viewers off. So while this isn't exactly good, it is at least somewhat interesting in spots.

Filmed in 1976 under the title The Killer Behind the Mask (a title it kept for some of the overseas releases) this wasn't released until three years later by Cannon Group under the Savage Weekend title. In other words, it's one of several dozen proto-slashers made in the 70s that managed to beat HALLOWEEN (1978) to the punch. The photography is pretty good in a dream-like / soft-focus kind of way but because it was shot open matte, the boom mic is often visible in the current full frame presentation (something a properly formatted DVD release could conceivably remedy). The soundtrack is comprised mostly of folk music and there's a decent amount of nudity in the uncut version. I'd say most fans of low-budget 70s flicks should get something out of watching this.

This was the film debut of not only Sanderson, who'd find his greatest fame a decade later playing yet another redneck ("I'm Larry. This is my brother Daryl and this is my other brother Daryl") on the TV sitcom "Newhart," but also of 7-year-old Yancy Butler, who would go on to some high profile film and TV work herself as an adult (like playing the lead in the short-lived series "Witchblade"). It was also one of the first films for Gale, who'd become a cult horror figure in the mid / late 80s after giving a memorable performance in Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator (1985). Director Paulsen also made the slasher Schizoid (1980) with Klaus Kinski and then spent most of the rest of his career working on prime time soap operas like "Dallas," "Dynasty" and "Knots Landing."

Issued several times on VHS throughout the 80s and 90s, this made its video debut here in America on the Paragon label in 1985, It has since fallen into the public domain so now it's easy to find online to view for free or on DVD for cheap through various companies like Cheezy Flicks and Mill Creek.

★★

Outrage (1950)

... aka: Nice Girl
... aka: Nobody's Safe

Directed by:
Ida Lupino

Outrage was one of the first American films to ever seriously tackle the subject of rape from a female perspective, but its journey from the page to the screen proved to be a censorship battle for director / co-writer Ida Lupino and Co. that was full of unfortunate compromises. After the script (written by Lupino, her then-husband Collier Young and Malvin Wald) was completed, it was submitted to and initially rejected by the PCA (Production Code Administration), an organization in place to enforce the days' strict Motion Picture Production Code (or Hays Code as it would later be called). So what did they object to exactly? For starters, the fact the entire film centered around rape was deemed "unacceptable." And then phrases like "sex maniac" and "sex fiend" and any allusions to what they considered sexual perversity were a no-no. And finally, the word "rape" itself was used far too many times for their liking in the initial script draft. To "soften" the film, the script then had to have all of the more direct wording removed before filming could commence. Paying careful attention to the film, you'll realize the word "rape" isn't uttered a single time. Instead, they had to refer to the act as "a criminal assault" or "a criminal attack."

Secretary / bookkeeper Ann Walton (Mala Powers) has fallen in love with Jim Owens (Robert Clarke), an auto parts supplier. He's just gotten a huge raise (10 bucks a week!) and now feels secure marrying Ann, moving in together and starting a family. Ann even somehow manages to get her mother (Lillian Hamilton) and stern professor father Eric's (Raymond Bond) approval, even though he's not too happy that Ann never went to college to become a teacher. Life's starting to look up for her, but Ann has unknowingly caught the eye of an unwanted admirer in the process. A food truck worker, who sells coffee and desserts outside the factory Ann works, has recently been hitting on her and making her feel uncomfortable with complements about her beauty and inquiries about her love life. He also doesn't seem too happy she's about to be married. Ann's forced to walk home late one night after a long day at work, the man follows her on her walk home and begins pursuing her through the empty streets. Ann's screams and attempts to make noise with a car horn fall on deaf ears, she's cornered in a truck yard and then "criminally assaulted."

Dirty, bruised and in a state of shock, Ann returns home, but the assault itself turns out to only be the beginning of her horrors. The crime is reported and a detective (Hal March) and a policewoman (Lovyss Bradley) show up to get information but, in order to cope, Ann's blocked out the incident to the point where she can't even remember what the rapist looked like aside from him having a deep scar on his neck. After spending some time holed up inside, she decides to return to work and try get back to her normal life. Unfortunately, all she sees on the outside is cruelty and a lack of empathy from a society out to demonize her as if she was the rapist. The assault has made the local newspaper and now everyone knows. Gossipy women point, stare and whisper. People cross the street to avoid her. Casual pats on the shoulder and gentlemanly escorts by the arm from even friends and co-workers cause her to flinch and she now can't go through with her marriage to Jim because she feels so filthy and dirty, so she calls the whole thing off.

Feelings of fear, guilt and shame, rejection from her small town and the internalization of her trauma lead the increasingly more paranoid Ann to run away from it all. She buys a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles and makes it only so far before hearing a radio broadcast about her disappearance and then fleeing once again in the night. While walking alongside the road, she sprains her ankle and collapses. When she awakens, she's at the Harrison Ranch. an orchard / plant run by Tom (Kenneth Peterson) and his wife Madge (Angela Clarke). where she meets the compassionate reverend and doctor Bruce Ferguson (Tod Andrews) and tells everyone her name is "Ann Blake." After being offered a job there as an orange packer, she proves herself to be a hard worker and moves her way up to bookkeeper, but is so skittish and secretive about her past she begins arousing some suspicion. Eventually, another would-be rapist (Jerry Paris) sends her over the edge and a violent retaliation and trial follow.

After the erosion of the Hays Code in 1968, movies that were allowed to actually pointedly address and visualize rape usually fell into two categories: revenge fantasies and courtroom dramas. Rape was also used as a throwaway plot device simply to up the nudity / sexploitation, ensure gory mayhem and / or to titillate those into 'rape fantasies.' I've noticed in a surprising number of films, the rape itself is even frequently just brushed off by the victim as if it's no big deal. Outrage is not one of those movies and is an earnest attempt to be a thorough account of the crime, the aftermath and, finally, the acceptance and healing process. It not only condemns the act itself but also condemns a society that turns around and victimizes the victim by shaming them into silence simply because they don't want to have to acknowledge the issue. The film is also concerned with the psychological toll on the victim caused not only by the rape itself but also society's warped perception of rape.

Though it veers toward sentimentality at the end and elements are certainly dated (some viewers may even be annoyed by the lead character's lack of fight and resiliency), this still works as a fascinating time capsule view into how a more conservative era dealt with an uncomfortable topic. It's well-made on a shoestring budget, the acting is good (particularly Powers in the challenging central role) and there are some interesting directorial and editing choices here and there capturing the hysteria and delirium of the victim. It was one of several joint ventures between Lupino, Young and Wald's company The Filmakers and RKO, who'd also collaborate on Beware, My Lovely (1952) and THE HITCH-HIKER (1953).

★★★