(Not So) Deep Thoughts of the Pop Cultural Persuasion, Part 3

This being October, there's lots of horror packed into this latest potpourri post. Over at Horror Geek Life, I recently explored the powerful gender commentary layered throughout American Mary (2012). The film was written and directed by Jen and Sylvia Soska (pictured above, #twinning), and opened six years ago. Here's an excerpt from the essay:

At one point, Mary asks her boss at the club, “Do you think I’m crazy?” Is Mary crazy? Or is she a women pushed too far, by financial distress and the constant, daily, ever-present threat of toxic masculinity? 

The Soska Sisters implicate us, the audience, in the sort of male gaze fantasy that's all too common in film.

I think it's one of the best horror films in recent memory, a truly visceral and thought-provoking experience. It also features an exceptionally brave performance from Katharine Isabelle, as Mary.

The film is also laced with plenty of delicious, dark humor, as well.

If you missed it over these last six years, please check it out this Halloween/horror season.

Marilyn Chambers strolls the avenue, looking for someone to feast on.

Whereas my first-time viewing of the painfully dull The Prowler (1981) is, as of now, the unmitigated nadir of my Halloween month movie marathon, revisiting David Cronenberg's Rabid (1977) has been the absolute highlight. Not only is the film packed with sequences of maniacal, flesh-eating gore, but it's also exquisitely composed and photographed. Even something as simple as the sequence where star Marilyn Chambers strolls down the city streets, passing a posted for Carrie before passing into a row of porno theaters is lush and hypnotic. I could watch an entire film of just that moment!

The attacks and the gore are deliciously relentless in Rabid.

Then of course there's the Cronenbergian body horror, and oh this film does not skimp on the body horror. With a ferocious, killer vagina having grown inside Chambers's armpit (don't ask, just watch and find out why), the film's allegorical exploration of the society's fear of the female body is both incisive and horrifying.

Chambers turns in a star-making performance.

Rapid earns its reputation as a masterpiece of horror, due in no small part to former porn actress Marilyn Chambers's brilliant star turn. It's a real career highlight, proving she had the chops for a sustained career both outside porn and within the niche of difficult yet endlessly rewarding genre fare, like the sort made by Cronenberg. Too bad she never really topped this.

The calm before the storm.

I read Stephen King's Carrie recently, then revisited the Brian De Palma film adaptation. It's been years since I last saw it, but it was such an eye-opening, important film during my adolescence, and I must've watched it at least a handful of times back then. No surprise, it still holds up. De Palma's mastery is never more apparent than during the extended prom sequence—from its dreamlike fairy tale peak in the early moments to a horrifically devastating end—is simply astonishing. And the cast is a veritable feast of 1970s-1980s legends: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, P.J. Soles, Edie McClurg, and John Travolta.

Genre legends P.J. Soles and Nancy Allen.

By the way, I have to ask, has anyone ever done ethereal melancholy better than Amy Irving in that film? I think not. And that hair. Top Ten Horror Hair, easy. Costar (and future Greatest American Hero) William Katt's abundant blonde locks ain't too shabby either.

Amy Irving's face tells us so much about Sue's inner turmoil.

As befits October's reputation as the annual celebration of ghouls, goblins, and the like, much of my pop culture consumption has centered around horror this month. I've begun watching the new Netflix series from Mike Flanagan, The Haunting of Hill House. Only a few episodes in, not yet willing to put down any thoughts until I get a little farther alone, but let's just say it's sufficiently drenched in dread so far.

Dance till you drop.

I have slipped in a few non-horror movies of late, though, including Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), a film so bleak it's often listed among the most depressing movies ever made. I actually find a strange comfort in this crushingly depressing period piece—set at a dance marathon during, appropriately, the Depression. Maybe because its nihilism feels appropriate to these anxious times we live in today.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? was a game-changing performance for Jane Fonda.

Jane Fonda is extraordinary in it, and I hope to say more about both her performance and the film later. Since catching the recent autobiographical documentary on HBO, Jane Fonda in Five Acts—which is absolutely fantastic—I've rekindled my love for Fonda's work, and my fascination with her wildly divergent public personae over the years. So keep an eye out for a future series, probably with each post taking a look at some aspect of Fonda's work or her celebrity, and where the two intersect.