BLACK CANDLES/EVIL EYE

Following on the coat-tales of the uninspired and quite ridiculous Grindhouse fiasco that bombed at the box office, BCI offers devotees of down and dirty exploitation a double does of doom, death, and desire with its Welcome to the Grindhouse series. Promising to deliver the solid chills and excess lacking at the theater, the series starts their line-up with the Spanish potboilers Black Candles and a curious giallo-gothic hybrid The Evil Eye. While superior films could have easily been found, and neither of these shockers are particularly important, the economical and entertainment value alone makes this purchase a no-brainer. Despite such obvious flaws of weak story lines and poor production values, this pairing offers a fund, atmospheric, and sleazy good time. Black Candles is especially controversial and underappreciated -- viscerally effective in a cheerfully exploitative manner. BCI brings them our way complete with trailers and theater ads, duplicating the Grindhouse experience.

First off is Black Candles, directed with style and verve by legend Jose Larraz. While lacking the sheer lyricism and emotional power of Vampyres, this infamous title offers a wealth of disturbing intimacy and emotional harshness. In short, it is stylized filth with a darkly romantic amorality. A traditional plot of the supernatural and infidelity is lent spice and outrage by the director's emphasis on carnage and carnality. After the death of her brother, Carol, a young woman, travels to the remote countryside of England to grieve. She brings along her lover Robert, and the two immediately realize that a mystery hangs over the untimely death. They are invited to stay with Carol's sister-in-law, who owns a large mansion of decadent beauty (much like the sister-in-law herself). Several occult artifacts are noted there, as well as a sense of doom. This, combined with the hostile and furtive action of the country folk, work on our heroine's already frayed nerves, and she becomes paranoid as her relationship with Robert deteriorates. Intrigued by both the sexuality of his host and the mystery of the occult, Robert easily succumbs to sexual temptation. Amidst satanic rituals, violence, and love with a goat (yup, that infamous scene you've all heard about by now), Carol stumbles upon a horrifying enigma that threatens to take not only her body but her very soul. (Moo, ho, ha, ha)!

In this dream of decadence and loss, a couple loose their moral underpinnings, respect, and identity. Approaching reality and the temptation/chaos of dreams from a purposefully confusing vantage point, refusing to state where the boundaries for each begins or ends, this story is something of an anti-plot, comprised more of elaborate set pieces and languid action then a fully convincing or satisfying story with themes or characterization. While this is never a suitable replacement for good old fashioned story telling, the director pulls it off with his attention to mood and style, which drips from each frame. The very themes on display here, ranging from subtle to awkward, are more devoted to sensual effect than character, so it is on this level that the story should be approached. While not as shocking, beautiful, or well crafted as either Vampyres or Coming of Sin, this tangled tale of desire, death, and the demonic is crammed full with shocks and an enthusiastic sense of debasement. If Larraz was aiming for a merging of decadence and refinement in Vampyres, here his choice of colors, camera, and story suggest a desire to capture honestly and without pretension the sordidness of desire and fate. If the plot itself is repetitious and labyrinthine, even its dull pacing and lack of empathy somehow manages to suggest a loss of innocence and the deterioration of human values.

This mirroring effect also appears in the correlation between the taboos of sexuality and society that are broken and the decaying sets/locations of crumbling, dirty magnificence. Characters are both literal representations of flesh and blood (if not very convincingly portrayed) and embodiments of values, each of which are lost in the softly pornographic sex play. Uneven in their effect, these scenes of sexual sadism create an effective friction of horror and arousal . These themes and characters suggest an unholy marriage of satanic amorality and lust, and the central theme born by the plot is the helpless loss of perspective and Self when experiencing occult ambiguity and all-too-human temptation. In all, this evokes a strong reaction from the viewer even if the reasons behind such are hazy. It is this very surrealistic approach that makes the experience otherworldly.

Not as exploitative or depraved as the above, Evil Eye is a better structured story and slightly more concerned with character. Coming in bloody, bold midst of the golden age of exploitative and tasteless, culturally repugnant fare -- and all the more good for it! -- this 1974 thriller is a little seen diamond in the rough. Well, okay, perhaps not a 'diamond' but certainly no worse (and in fact much better!) than many of the soulless, bland direct-to-DVD shit-fests released today. Starring Richard Conte (The Godfather), Anthony Steffen (The Night Evelyn Came Out of The Grave) and Pilar Velasquez, this weird melding of psycho-drama and the supernatural is unrepentant, good old fashioned fun.

Peter Crane is having nightmares about murdering someone. Unable to differentiate between reality and dream, he is hospitalized by his psychiatrist Dr. Stone. Soon a slew of people begin dying mysteriously, and we're led to wonder if Peter is the killer or is there something uncanny happening? Something that questions the borderland between dream and waking, reality and fantasy. . . Merging conventions of the slasher and demonic thriller, Evil Eye manages to evoke the basic fear of violent death with the persecution complex inherent in both Hitchcock and Giallo films -- while lacking their style or innovation. A strong torrent of mayhem and fright is created by possibly supernatural underpinnings. Sensational and thematically subversive, the main story peels back the boils of hypocritical respectability (and politically motivated morality).

The quality of both films here lack the visual clarity so often seen on DVDS yet this somehow adds to their charm. Mirroring the quality (or lack thereof) of the movies, the technical polish for both Black Candles and Evil Eye is somewhat lacking. Both are featured in attractive 1.85:1 widescreen, and the former appears to be largely uncut. While fairly bright in color, the prints suffer from color distortion, grain, and scratches. While this may bother the casual DVD watcher, the cult fanatic may well see this reflecting the feel and tone of Grindhouse as a genre. Either way, these flaws do little to harm the films themselves, and add a touch of historical authenticity to the viewing experience, as this is how they would have probably looked when ran in those dingy smoky theaters in the seventies (yeas, I know Black Candles is an 80s film but damn it, it FEELS like it should have been made a decade before!). Presented in English language dubs (sadly lacking language options or subtitles), the audio suffers from minor background noise. Again, a small flaw for a rare presentation. The affordable price of this disc, the rarity of the films, and the overall pleasure of the package should be more than enough to attract fans.

Review by William Simmons