bank holiday double feature - TWO
Little Otik + The Cremator -Paired with a cold Pilsner.
For out Bank Holiday Monday double feature recommendations, we are suggesting two Czech films that utilise experimental editing and cinematography. The first is Little Otik (2000) By Jan Švankmajer which is a magical realist film about a couple who are unable to have a baby, and in an attempt to cheer his wife up, Karel Hovak (Jan Hartl) gifts her a root that resembles a child. The wife, Bozena Horáková (Veronika Zilková) loves it and cares for it and the tree stump baby comes alive. Later the baby’s appetite gets larger and larger, till he cannot be controlled anymore.
The film takes place in the Czech Republic but has a strangeness and surrealness to it, for example in one scene babies are wrapped up in paper, and sold like you would sell meat in a butchers. It presents itself as a children's film, but it anything but, a creepy old man has a stop motion sequence of him getting an erection, as a hand comes out from his trousers.
Little Otik starts out as an exploration of grief with an element of magical realism, how a couple finds solace in a fake baby, but then becomes a fantastic nightmare when the baby comes alive, eating hair like its spaghetti and growing bigger and bigger. The director is a famous surrealist Czech director who uses stop motion, and crazy art direction in contrast to his films real world setting. For example in one of my favourite shot you see a room full of children’s toys but far from being comforting, the toys are covered in flesh, blood and guts.
A similar Czech film is The Cremator by Juraj Herz (1969) which is often cited as one of the best films of the Czechoslovakian new wave. This uses experimental camera lenses and quick editing to make a film that has a social realist style, but slowly becomes more surrealist and takes on the style of the German expressionist filmmakers.
The Cremator explores fascism and the Nazi party coming into Prague through horror as and dark comedy. Karel Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrusínský) works at a crematorium which he refers to as the "Temple of Death” in Prague, during the 1930s where he becomes part of ‘the party’ and turns against his family, friends and community to gain power, and become the executioner. The film gained a cult following through its experimental editing and cinematography. The cinematographer Stanislav Milota, uses strange camera lenses to contradict the straight face monologues of the character, as well as wide lens to make the room seem much bigger, and gives it a strange feeling.
Jaromír Janáček's editing is also fast and erratic paralleling Karel’s decline into fascism. Karel sees the act of cremation as a sort of reincarnation, the ideology of the nazi party becomes entwined with his Buddhist beliefs until he believes that by killing and cremating people he is liberating them from suffering.
The Cremator was banned by the government and ended the main actors' acting careers in the Czech republic, but gain its cult following when it became available in the 90s. The film was influenced by Jan Švankmajer, the director of little Otik and so these films are perfect to view together. The film was shot in black and white and sound was created with a technique called ADRing, meaning that everything was recorded in a studio after, which gives it a disjointed feel. We’d recommend a cold Czech pilsner, maybe even paired with a stiff drink perhaps a shot of vodka if you’re into it.
Friday Night Double Feature - ONE
The Witch + Blood On Satans Claw with a mulled cider
Where better to start our double feature recommendation than the rich and eerie world of folk horror, the genre that sparked the first inklings of Lacking The Boggart. The aesthetic mark of this genre is one that has always stood out to me, the beautiful landscapes and animals that would be otherwise harmless that are made into something sinister.
No film does this better than Robert Eggers The Witch (2015), that follows a family as they try to carve out a life for themselves in the wilderness of 1630s New England. Perfectly paired, we think, with Piers Hoggard’s 1971 film Blood On Satans Claw, which centres around the children of a west country village who are slowly turned into a coven of devil worshippers after a mysterious face his uncovered by a plow.
A lot has been said about the religious themes in The Witch but a lot has been said about religious themes in most horror films. I’m much more interested in those that mostly go unnoticed in the wild drama of man vs god, that being the very small children. What struck me was that the children’s innocents was the very thing that let the evil in. For example, when the baby disappears, which is the first supernatural occurrence in The Witch it is during a game of peekaboo.
This is also true in Blood On Satans Claw; when the devil enters into the community and child begin to lure each other away it is always in the ruse of a game. And again a similarity can be drawn between the films anti-heroins who are young and take part in the children’s game but our mature enough to make this menacing. They are also both mature enough to understand the real evil rather than interpreting it in terms of a game.
The knowledge is what makes them scary, because though you are looking at a young girl you know she wedges knowledge that could destroy you. This all plays into the classic horror trope of virgin vs whore. It’s hard to miss the coding of a girl called Angle in Blood On Satans Claw, and the pure blonde hair of Thomasin in The Witch. While both these girls are coded as innocent, they act in a way far from it.
Where the blame is placed in these movies probably speaks a lot for the times they were made. In Blood On Satans Claw none of the adults are held responsible, whereas in The Witch I feel as though everything that goes wrong is place on the head of the father for his stubbornness and pride. This is because the latter was made in the last few years in a time where we put a lot of responsibility onto parents for the well being of their children.
My advice is watch The Witch first and then Blood On Satans Claw second to you ease off the terror. Though both are scary, The Witch will do the real damage. Watch them both with mulled cider for the perfect cinema experience. Both these movies are available to rent on Amazon or very easily bought on DVD if you’re into having the physical copy.
