Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005)

Dir. Dario Argento
Colour, 93 mins.
Distributed by Anchor Bay Entertainment

Okay, I'll admit it. I really love Dario Argento. That's why, unfortunately, I'd been avoiding his newer movies as much as humanly possible--save for The Third Mother--for fear that they'd be disappointing and lackluster.

Happily, it turns out Do You Like Hitchcock? is not a bad film.

It's not a great film, either, mind you. What you end up with is a reasonably tense and well-written murder mystery flick. The problem is it's just not what we've come to love and expect from Mr Argento. You never feel as if the protagonist is stuck in a nightmare--in fact, he's a pretty unsympathetic character in general, so it's hard to feel anything for him at all.

The film starts out with our protagonist, Giulio, as a child, and making his way through the woods on a bike. Upon spying a cloaked woman on the path ahead of him, he decides to follow her to a decrepit cabin, where he witnesses her ritually slaughtering a chicken with another woman. Giulio is so shocked by the violence that he blows his cover, falling from his perch by the window he was peering in through, and the two women give chase to him. Nothing really comes of this scene except for the occasional flashback later on in the film, and a sort of parallel to Giulio's later life.

Cut to the present, and unsurprisingly, Giulio is still a peeping tom. He's not following witches around anymore, however, just spying on his neighbour across the street with binoculars. This sultry beauty, Sasha, he finds, is constantly fighting with her abusive mother. He runs into her on the street at several points, mainly in the video shop they both frequent (Giulio is a film student studying German Expressionism, and Sasha is a self-professed Hitchcock nut). When Sasha begins showing a romantic interest in Federica, a mysterious blonde, it's not long before Sasha's mother is brutally bludgeoned to death, and Giulio becomes obsessed with the murder, bound and determined that Sasha and Federica are mimicking the plot of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. Each of them, he guesses, is committing a murder for the other, and now it's Sasha's turn to kill.


Obviously the film is meant to be an homage to Hitchcock's Strangers and Dial M for Murder, but it's chock-full of other, wink-wink nudge-nudge self-referential nods. The video store Giulio frequents sports a massive poster by the front door for Argento's 2003 film The Card Player (if you're going to plug your own films, shouldn't you choose one that wasn't universally hated by critics and filmgoers alike?) and the shelf behind the clerk's desk has Scarlet Diva stocked, Asia Argento's directorial project from a few years back. It's all a bit silly. The homage to Hitchcock, unfortunately, is too heavy-handed and obvious to really work. Yes, it's a decent murder mystery, and yes, Argento does include his trademark twist ending, but if you really want to see a great Hitchcock-inspired film, Argento's earlier giallo films such as The Bird With the Crystal Plumage do a much better job of it.

The lighting and cinematography are utilitarian, in a sense: they certainly give you a great view of the action, and nothing's ever underlit or obscured, but they do it artlessly. We're only allowed a few short glimpses of the creativity and magic we'd expect from an Argento film in the form of some lovely architectural shots of the film's setting, Torino. The soundtrack is a constant distraction--I'm having a really hard time recalling a single moment in the film that wasn't accompanied with often inappropriate music from a special level of made-for-TV hell. In suspenseful movies, silence really can be golden. The UK-produced dubbing is similarly irritating. The tone often doesn't quite jive with the actions and expressions of the characters, and at its worst is very shrill.

It could be argued that Do You Like Hitchcock? has merit in its unusual treatment of the "gaze". Giulio is obsessed with watching--in the way that the movie viewer herself watches--and he feels his voyeurism makes him part of the crimes and intrigue unfolding around him. Eventually his role as observer transcends the passive, making him feel a kind of responsibility to unveil what has really been going on, and ultimately making him a target. However, the theme is never really explored to its fullest potential, and certainly breaks no new ground.


All in all, Do You Like Hitchcock? is worth a watch for mystery or thriller fans: the story itself is really pretty decent, even if there is nothing else particularly remarkable about the film. Blood and gore is kept at a bare minimum, and there are some pretty tense chase scenes, but you'd be best off not viewing it as an Argento film.

Maybe I just need to watch more Hitchcock.

The Wasp Factory (1984)

By Iain Banks
This edition by Abacus Press, 1990
ISBN: 0-349-10177-9

The early eighties were a good time for horror.

Out of the gore-drenched, exploitative and shocking sleazefests of the seventies emerged the modern slasher. VHS and Betamax allowed the release and distribution of movies that would never make it at the box office, sought out by gorehounds and teenage thrillseekers. It was the time of the video nasties, and despite the "think of the children!" brigade's efforts, some of the most iconic pictures of modern horror were produced in those years: A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, Friday the 13th, and The Shining among them.

Horror would comment on the world around it, reflecting the cynicism of the decade, anxieties about the decay of the traditional nuclear family and often, gender roles. It was frequently darkly funny, without ever quite stooping to the self-parody that the endless sequels of the following years would bring.

Surprising, then, that a work of literary fiction would cause the controversy that The Wasp Factory did upon its release in 1984.

The story is told from the perspective of Frank Cauldhame, a teenage boy who lives an intensely secluded life on the small Scottish island owned by his family (this family having been reduced over the years to his father, an eccentric and distant character, and his brother Eric, who is away in a psychiatric institution).

From the beginning of the story we're introduced to Frank's unusual, quasi-religious rituals and talismans. Frank believes that the island is his domain, and protects it using Sacrifice Poles: literally poles in the ground which have been decorated and anointed with the disembodied heads of animals Frank has killed, and his own bodily fluids. In the attic of his home he has constructed the titular Factory, an elaborate wasp-killing mechanism that serves as the central item in his divinations. Despite his magical thinking and obsessive rituals and routines, Frank never comes off as an entirely unsympathetic character--everything he does has a reason in his own mind. He seeks symbolism and meaning in everything around him, including the many deaths he has a hand in.

Near the beginning of the narrative Frank is informed that his mentally ill, sadistic brother Eric has escaped from the institution he was being treated at, and is likely to be making his way home. Sure enough, it isn't long before Frank receives a phone call from his brother and we get a glimpse of his manic cruelty--similar calls are interspersed throughout the novel, making Eric's presence a looming and ever-nearing threat to the comparatively kinder, gentler Frank.

Like its film counterparts, the novel is unflinching in its depiction of violence. At its core, The Wasp Factory is a book about suffering, and that suffering--nearly always at the hands of its adolescent "protagonist"--is generally inflicted against animals and other children. It is not a pleasant read. Frank describes to us very matter-of-factly the ways in which he kills two of his cousins and his younger brother, Paul. The murders are absurd and surreal in their creativity, and would be darkly funny if not for the chilling lack of remorse and human compassion Frank demonstrates while performing them.

Frank, the reader must understand, is a deeply misogynistic character. At a young age he was involved in an incident that left him castrated, only half a man, as he occasionally laments, and closer to the women he despises for their alleged stupidity and overemotional tendencies. Men and women, he admits, each have their own strengths: women can give birth, and men can take life. And take life Frank does, often and without remorse, to prove to himself that he can be as much of a man as any other.

It is easy to understand why The Wasp Factory would have more impact on the reader in the eighties as opposed to now, almost twenty-five years later. Our generation has been exposed to the gritty, cinema-verite cruelties of the August Underground and Guinea Pig films, the over-the-top splatter of the Saw and Hostel series, and it's easy to take for granted just how desensitized we are. Sure, the seventies definitely had their share of really vile stuff, but it never quite approached the sheer volume and mainstream exposure our modern equivalents have.

Nevertheless, I found The Wasp Factory to be a compelling and disturbing glimpse into the mind of a very twisted individual. Not very long, at around 195-210 pages depending on the edition you pick up, it's also a quick and absorbing read. I'd recommend it highly for its shocking, Grand-Guignol style violence and its commentary on adolescence and gender.