Last Breath

The Internet is a wonderful place, and one of the more wonderful aspects is Facebook. Early one Sunday morning I received a friend request from someone called Ty Jones. I’d not heard of Ty before but looked and realized we had mutual acquaintances. Soon after accepting I became familiar very quickly with a movie called Last Breath. You see Ty is a man who’s out there making films and using the power of the Internet and more notably social networking to spread the word. This is a guy who’s not just sat there waiting for the world to discover his movie, he is out there making sure he tells the world about it. Last Breath is Ty’s labour of love; he’s written the movie, directed it and starred in it, now here he is out there promoting it.

Michael and Tina have been together a while, they have a child and are making their way through life. For Michael there is a whole new future in his business, new premises will mean great opportunities for expansion. For Tina however it’s a different matter, she sees fault in everything and is constantly battling with her doubts, but then maybe she has good reason. This couple are at a crossroads in their life, its time to move forward together or go it alone, well alone for one of them anyway. A visit for the couple to Michael’s new premises throws them the ultimate curve-ball, for deep within the heart of the building lies a cruel sadistic man with a point to make, have the couple walked into their worst nightmare?

If you see the trailer for Last Breath you would be very much persuaded that you are about to see the next “torture porn” and maybe this is what the producers intention was; but there is more to Last Breath than a bit of cheap horror. This is a very strange synergy of two genre types, the afternoon movie aimed squarely at the female audience, and the horror aspect aimed at the male viewer; you think as a fan of horror movies you have seen just about every genre combination but Last Breath is something very different.

While Last Breath is without a doubt very different, I won’t necessarily say it’s new. To be honest I saw the movies message a mile off, but then I watch too many movies for my own good. As soon as the movie enters the torture element, I saw its message loud and clear, but that does not make it a bad thing. The delivery of the movie is clear, there is a strong message of morality, and every single plot element and device is met, no stone left unturned.

For the person seeking morality there are messages here as pure as the less disturbing chapters of the Bible. For the horror film enthusiast there is a torture device on offer that’s pure Saw territory.

It won’t come as a surprise that Last Breath is an independent movie, a film dreamt about with passion but delivered on a tight budget. What is great is that despite the movies low budget it looks bloody good quality for the money. So many of these independent movies look hazy, almost like they have been filmed in a steamy bathroom; this is clear and crisp like any big budget offering.

Both Ty Jones and Aaron Laue deliver very convincing performances, but a quick scan of the credits makes it obvious that these are more than just actors in the movie. And this is where my issue lies, while both the male performers put their heart and soul into this, the female characters seem much less committed. I’m not sure of the relationships of the people involved in the movie, but I felt no commitment from the main female characters. Mandy Bannon reminds me so much of a young Mink Stole, and it strikes me that maybe she still has not grasped the difference between screen and theatre acting, but a newcomer to the screen she’ll have time to rectify that and I look forward to her future roles.

While the movie has good and bad aspects the key thing is here is a group of people making it happen, a low budget movie is seeing film festivals across the United States and getting very good reports. And now the producers are looking at getting the movie seen across the world.

When and however you get to see the movie, and this might not be an easy task for some reading this, I really hope you take the time to see this, for while being a clear moral story, its also a lesson in self belief. Last Breath proves that dreams can come true and if you have a cinematic dream this movie will show you it really can come true.

Suspiria - Blu-ray

There was a time when the ultimate baptism of fire for any future partner would revolve around how they reacted when I showed them Suspiria. If they could stomach Suspiria without the exclamation “you’re really f**ked up!” that the relationship had any chance of surviving. For the uneducated Suspiria is a harsh vivid depiction for horror, for the more educated it was probably one of the tamer movies I had in my collection.

Dario Argento’s 1977 horror movie has always been one of the greatest assaults on the senses of any horror movie. With its lavish sets, vivid ear trembling Goblin soundtrack, and gross out prolonged gore; Suspiria is a sceptical on any level. To look at it is a thing of beauty, even if the story itself suffers some flaws. The 21^st Century has bought something new to visual entertainment, something that Argento’s spectacular movie was made for, the wonder that is high definition viewing.

The movie itself surrounds a young American woman who travels to an acclaimed school of dance in Europe. Susie Banyon (Jessica Harper) is immediately offended by the German manners she encounters, the taxi driver is rude and insensitive and her expected warm greeting at the school is just a locked door. But Susie witnesses something, a strange series of events, these events lead to the death of one of her potential classmates in a highly unusual manner. Susie’s stay is drenched in further unsociable behaviour, and more equally disturbing deaths. In a strange country, and the talk of witchcraft banded about like it’s perfectly acceptable, Susie’s stay slowly gets worse.

In 1977 and for considerable years after, few movies had quite the same effect as Suspiria. The movie clearly put Italian cinema on the map in respect of horror, and gave the very stagnant horror styling’s of American and British horror a much needed wake up call. This was a movie that ticked all the right boxes and gave horror movies across the world something they craved, a really good scare. Its amazing to think but it took over two decades for American cinema to catch up, now the sort of terror you receive in Suspiria is commonplace in cinema, but well ahead of its time.

Suspiria is quite unpleasant in its character depictions, everyone in the movie including the character of Susie is fairly unlikeable, all very blunt and to the point, with appalling attitudes and beliefs. The main negative result of this is that when characters die you are not particularly bothered. Its not all bad it’s the unpleasantness that also gives the movie part of its charm.

For me personally the most impressive aspects of the movie are its style and soundtrack. Argento goes out of his way to deliver some of the most impressive looking architecture you could ever wish to see on film, the colours are so vivid, the structures so over the top and overstated. The décor for the movie is incredibly “loud”, from the bright red exteriors, to the lavish blue velour interiors; you really would be incredibly hard to find something that looks anything like this.

Onto the movies score, performed and composed by Italian Prog. Rock band Goblin. The wonder of their score is that you do not need to see the movie, only hear the music to get a glimpse of exactly how terrifying the movie is. Suspiria is a movie that’s main mechanism is its score, from heavy pounding electric guitars to haunting vocal whispers. Never has a movie been so well served by its soundtrack, take the soundtrack away and you have less than half a movie.

From a special effects perspective Argento delivers something quite spectacular, victims are slowly bleed on razor sharp wire, throats are ripped out, and hearts stabbed in ripped open chest cavities. While the blood effects are over the top, they are representative of the movies other vivid colours. Like the depiction of horror Argento was decades ahead of more popular horror cinema, to the extent that it has taken all this time for English speaking movies to catch up.

I wont lie, the acting needs a little to be desired, and its not even the fault of dubbing. It could however be on the part of Argento’s direction however, trying to take the viewer on a more ghostly experience by making the performances a little less animated than they should. You don’t quite get the impression that a couple of the characters are fighting for their lives, and this is in some ways an inexcusable flaw.

Praise put aside Suspiria does have a bit of a problem, and that is after an initial viewing it never quite lives up to the excitement of the first viewing (unlike a lot of other Argento movies), personally I have found Suspiria quite difficult to watch the whole way through for a few years now. It still impresses with its gore, overwhelms you with its soundtrack but needed something new to take it forward. That “new” is the wonder of Blu-ray, the experience is like a fresh one, the definition of colour has never looked so amazing, the clarity of vision a shining example of why high definition came about, I would go as far as to say that Suspiria on high definition makes a viewing experience that will take a long time for anything to catch up with it or equalled. Imagine taking something that already looked a step ahead of other high definition movies, then ramped the visual feast up a level. Few movies matched up to Suspira on DVD, now I find it hard to believe anything will match up to the movie in its Blu-ray format. Photographs cannot capture what has happened here, neither can text, but believe me when I say you’ll never see anything like this, and even if you are not a fan of the horror genre, you’ll find some redeeming features here.

Special Features:

Fear At 400 Degrees: The Cine-Excess Of Suspiria:- This talking head feature has some quality talking heads, but is head butted full force by the banal ramblings of Xavier Mendik a cult movie specialist. Mendik is the variety of soul who will chuck as many big words as he possibly can into a sentence, whether it’s a because of a severe dictionary beating, or whether its to sound impressive it just spoils what would otherwise be a quality release. Talking like he lives in the world of the tongue twister, (Peter Piper springs to mind) Mendik baffles then mispronounces as many works as he can, leaving a thick dirty taste in my mouth. The documentary is further hindered by the bizarre ratio it’s presented with. After a beautiful crisp clear widescreen movie, you then get this bizarre, poor quality print documentary that sits centre screen surrounded by borders. The legend that is Kim Newman, Patricia McCormack, Norman J. Warren, Claudio Simonetti and last but no means least Dario Argento adds the quality element to this otherwise odd documentary.

A very real audio commentary finds Kim Newman and Alan Jones discussing the movie in a very unscripted manner, some commentaries are put together almost scripted. Here you believe your listening to two great friends discussing a movie that in a number of ways has changed their lives.

Finally Suspiria Perspectives is a series of conversations with the characters outlined in the main documentary, its kind of like watching the edited bits not quite suitable for the documentary, but on the whole is just more elaborate discussion of the wonders of Suspiria.

Suspiria is available only in the UK at present on the Blu-ray format.