Dario Argento Sleepless DVD Review

Conclusion

A prime example of Giallo cinema with one of the slickest, sickest murder scenes ever recorded. The whole film doesn't quite live up to the impossible standards of Susperia or Deep Red, but it is a return to form for director Dario Argento.

Plot

A prostitute with a really hot rack collects her payment from the drawer. She decides it doesn't meet minimum wage requirements, so she does a little redistribution of wealth from amongst her employer's belongings. She discovers some kinky toys like nine inch knives and decides that minimum wage is just a number, only she accidentally takes an incriminating scrapbook with her when she leaves. The employer ends up following her and kills her on a train.

The police recognise a pattern in the murder method that corresponds with cases many years before. This prompts them to consult the police officer who worked on those cases. He is now retired, but the case still fascinates him, so he decides to lend a hand.

Not the plot

Minimum wage is the minimum amount of compensation that an employer is allowed to pay to an employee. The purpose of minimum wage is:

• to protect employees from being exploited


• to allow employees to afford basic necessities


• to lift those in poverty out of poverty


• to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor

Sounds good? Well, imagine going into a supermarket to buy hairspray, like Pantera often did. You know that the cheapest hairspray costs roughly $5 per can, while the most expensive hairspray costs roughly $50 per can. Now you arrive at the supermarket, only to find that hairspray costs a minimum of $15 per can. Even the hairspray you know cost only $5 yesterday has been marked up. You find this outrageous so you ask the manager for an explanation. The manager tells you that the government now requires him to charge a minimum hairspray charge.

This is called price fixing. Whether the government does it with hairspray or minimum wage, or whether the maffia does it with the price of stolen sneakers makes no difference. These are cartel tactics. Yet the manager explains to you that those poor people who were working at the $5 per can hairspray factory will be able to afford the basic necessities now. Should you feel better about paying $15 for a $5 can of hairspray?

The problem is that people who were used to paying for cheap hairspray would now reconsider paying $15 for a $5 can of hairspray. Let's be honest - if you were going to pay $15 for a can of hairspray anyway, the cans that cost $20 before are not that expensive by comparison. The results are that those who really can't afford to pay more than $5 for a can of hairspray are going to go without hairspray, while those who can afford to pinch off more on hairspray are still going to try to get their money's worth. This means that they're going to fork out an extra $5 and get a $20 can of hairspray for $20 instead of a $5 can of hairspray for $15. Where does this leave those working at the $5 hairspray factory?

Instead of competing with the $7 or $10 can of hairspray competitors, they now have to compete with the $15 per can variety of hairspray - competitors that were way out of their league and whom they did not have to worry about before. The $5 hairspray factory becomes the victim of an inefficient market. It won't be long before the $5 hairspray factory has to downsize or restructure to compensate for less profits. If they close, it will be impossible for someone to open another $5 hairspray factory, because the minimum amount you may charge for hairspray is $15.

What's more is there's a huge difference between a minimum wage and a minimum living wage. In countries like America, the minimum wage is already far above what is considered the minimum living wage. This is part of why many of their industries are forced to outsource during the current economic crisis. Industries simply can't afford to pay a minimum wage that is above a minimum living wage when they are in trouble. A $15 can of hairspray is still worth more than a $5 can of hairspray that has been marked at $15, so companies will naturally try to retain their medium to high-level management rather than their minimum wage earners. Minimum wage earners can be replaced more easily. Outsourcing brings the advantage of foreign exchange rates, whether you're looking for minimum wage earners or medium to high-level employees.

The real effects of minimum wage are thus far removed from their aspirations. Minimum wage actually causes unemployment and distorts the labour market. Besides, working at McDonalds flipping burgers or serving coffee at Starbucks is not a career. Not even if you have a liberal arts degree. You're going to have to be satisfied with the bare minimum if you want to make a career out of menial labour, or start a business of your own and hope that minimum wage or labour unions don't nail you before you even try.

Review

The soundtrack is composed by Goblin, which has become a staple for Argento films. It plays a large part in making the murder scenes so powerful. The story is great, and although the pace of the film gets painfully slow at times, this is one of my top ten horror films of the nineties and beyond.

Director

Dario Argento.

Cast

Chiara Caselli, Stefano Dionisi, Gabriele Lavia, Barbara Lerici, Max von Sydow.

Rating

Top 10 Horror Films Made to Date

The formidable Vault of Horror requested a top 10 Horror film list from some goremeisters of the blogosphere. While I'm straight and homophobically so, Brian Solomon's smooth tenor voice eventually won me over so I present to you the Top 10 Horror Films Made to Date as determined by the caprice of the Necro Files.

By the way, the title does not refer to films you can actually date, although luring an unsuspecting member of the opposite sex to your lair to privately view one of these celluloid autopsies might help in your quest to sift the wheat from the Children of the Corn, as it were.

My Top 10 Horror Films Made to Date

1. The Addiction


2. Brain That Wouldn't Die


3. Dagon


4. Bram Stoker's Dracula


5. Devil's Nightmare


6. House on Haunted Hill


7. Manhunter


8. Plague of the Zombies


9. Rabid


10. Sleepless

I do realise that I skipped on a few stalwarts of the genre like the great Alfred Hitchcock and the bitterly satirical George A Romano, but you can find those on just about any horror list. Here follows a short description of my reasons for choosing each film:

The Addiction

Artsy fartsy director Abel Ferrara brings this black and white masterpiece to life. Whether you put stock in its allegorical references to drug addiction or not, this is a pleasure to watch. It's much deeper than an ingrown toenail, yet about twice as gruesome. One of my favourite films, of any genre.

Brain That Wouldn't Die

One of those classics that just gets better every time I watch it. Picture a movie about giving head. No, not in that way, I mean really giving head. Exit bowel movements and sensation of your lower limbs. Enter existential crisis. Mayhem ensues.

Dagon

A patchwork of Lovecraft tales strung together with the sinews of a race of uncanny fish people. Lofty literary pretensions aside, it features a few gratuitous boob shots and buckets of blood.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

For a change, they did it by the book. With by the book I mean they did in fact base it on Bram Stoker's Dracula. This is not Bram Stoker's Dracula cut from the same cloth as Stephen King's Children of the Corn. Nay, nay, this is Dracula more or less as envisaged by Bram Stoker, complete with Hungarian expletives and the whores of Satan.

Devil's Nightmare

This delightful film tells the tale of a group of tourists who get stuck in a castle. A succubus visits the castle and manages to seduce all of them. Each tourist represents one of the seven deadly sins. Fucking tourists. They have no moral fibre.

House on Haunted Hill

No horror list would be complete without at least one Vincent Price film. I chose this one, but Shock or The Last Man on Earth would also suffice.

Manhunter

I have a morbid fascination with this film. It must be the shocking pastels of the synthetic materials they wore in the eighties. I also enjoy the fact that the film focuses on the eerie Tooth Fairy instead of on the eerie Hannibal Lecter.

Plague of the Zombies

No horror list would be complete without at least one Hammer film. Of course, the same goes for at least one Dracula film and at least one wolf man film. This is Hammer's only Zombie film, and one of the most influential Zombie films from the Voodoo inspired side of the genre. Still some of the hottest corpses I've seen. I can scarce believe that the actresses are English.

Rabid

David Cronenberg cut his teeth on low budget happy accidents like this one. Featuring the delectable Marilyn Chambers, this film is gorno with suitable metaphor before there even was gorno devoid of metaphor.

Marilyn Chambers is a topless and bottomless (depending on the weather, I guess) waitress who turned into an adult film star. After that, she nearly broke into the mainstream by landing roles such as this one. Unfortunately, her past as an adult film star made film producers nervous and she was kept out of big mainstream films. It is unfortunate, because she's a fine scream queen and she does an amazing job in this film.

Sleepless

A brilliant addition to the giallo genre long after it had been declared dead and buried. You simply can't touch Dario Argento when it comes to stylish, sterile and meticulously planned murder scenes. While I am a huge fan of both Susperia and Deep Red, this film has all the trademarks of a resurrection. Unfortunately, the resurrection didn't go anywhere and giallo has been declared dead more times than Rasputin.

That's my current top 10 list. Of course I neglected to add a wolf man. If I did, I would've included Curse of the Devil. I also haven't included any of the excellent Korean horrors of recent years because I haven't delved into them yet. Comments, queries, black mail, lacy thongs and beer money are all welcome!

Giallo: Grindhouse films with Italian style

Giallo is the Italian word for yellow. As a film genre, it represents the Italian version of American grindhouse films. While American grindhouse mainly enjoys expression by means of exploitation films, the Italians managed to entwine a literary genre too, albeit inspired by American pulp fiction.

From the late 1920s, the Monadori publishing house specialised in horror and crime pulp fiction. This house published cheap suspense novels in response to the rising popularity of American whodunits (who done it? or who did it?). In fact, the first giallo novels were translations of their popular Anglophone counterparts.

These giallo novels appeared with – you guessed it – characteristically yellow covers. Since then, the term giallo became synonymous with intrigue and suspense in Italy.




Besides the popularity of their Anglophone counterpats, giallo novels were inspired by the legacy of the Grand Guignol theatre in Paris. This theatre could best be described as the theatre of the macabre. Since closing its doors in 1962, the term Grand Guignol is often used to describe amoral horror entertainment. Sweeny Todd is a shameless tribute to Grand Guignol theatre, and doubly amoral due to Johnny Depp's spooky singing.

Giallo in Film

Characteristics of Giallo in film include:

• buckets of blood


• stylish camera work


• eerie music


• gratuitous boob shots


• staged drama in the vein of Opera

Since these correlate closely with my 10 Commandments of Horror, I am hooked on giallo. In fact, I should probably include eerie music and operatic tragedy as the 11th and 12th commandments of horror.

Giallo sets itself apart from the American grindhouse formula of babes and badasses because it is mostly driven by a whodunit plot. While giallo is not prepared to be upstaged by means of boob shots or buckets of blood, it does have something more compelling than just mere lustful gore.



Some giallo directors include Dario Argento, Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci. Mario Bava's film The Girl Who Knew Too Much is regarded as the first popular giallo film. Note the obvious reference to Alfred Hitchcock. Lucio Fulci is more renowned for his inventive zombie films, but he has worked in the giallo genre with films like The House By The Cemetery. Last but not least, Dario Argento.

Dario Argento, the Goremeister of Giallo

The Italian Hitchcock, Dario Argento, is the most famous example of giallo cinema. As a film genre, giallo enjoys influence from:

• fantasy


• crime fiction


• horror fiction


• eroticism

With films like Suspiria, Argento manages to blend all of the above in a masterly way. Argento likes to reinvent himself, but he is at his best when he does crime fiction. Examples of his genius at work are Sleepless and Deep Red (also known as The Hatchet Murders).



For eerie music, Argento often teams up with Enno Moriccone and progressive rock band Goblin. Deep Red in particular stands along with Vampyros Lesbos as exploitation films which are often revered for their brilliant soundtracks.

Suggested links

• Grand Guignol tribute site, with sick posters.


• Kinoeye special report on giallo films - brilliant essay.


• Vault of Horror reports on Dario Argento's first English film in 15 years.