Last (x) movies you saw

Maps to the Stars has not opened in the US

ah sorry didn't notice the wiki release dates were for Cannes

I'd really like to spend some time with late/decline period Argento. All the late work I've seen is Stendhal Syndrome (which I saw during a pretty bad depression and barely remember; I'm not even sure I finished it) and his Phantom of the Opera. Phantom of the Opera is a massive, massive turd- in places it feels more like a Charles Band movie than Argento, and when he tries to shock or do some awful Fellini-derived grotesque stuff it's pretty clear that he doesn't have the slightest handle on his material. It could be bad enough to be funny provided you can somehow convince someone else to watch it with you and you're able to stop cringing at how badly his career went off the rails.

The stuff I want to track down first is Sleepless (which I have heard good things about, but which has been a bit difficult to get my hands on- there's an OOP Artisan DVD I vaguely remember having some major issues, maybe to do with the framing or re-editing?), Trauma, and Mother of Tears (there's enough talk about this being intentional, enjoyable camp that I'm curious). Giallo and The Card Player I can take or leave- the thought of an Argento movie where a generic serial killer taunts the police over a fucking webcam is just deadeningly awful, but I'd watch it someday if it came up on a streaming service.

I do have one more well-regarded Argento left to see- The Black Cat with Harvey Keitel, from his Two Evil Eyes anthology with George Romero.

Re: Cronenberg, I don't really think of him as being in a decline at all. There are low points, sure, but even his worst I can still enjoy and readily identify as a Cronenberg movie (nb: I have not seen M. Butterfly). I'm a little more excited about his upcoming novel than I am Maps to the Stars, though.

A Dangerous Method among his best.

a very protestant remark

Two Evil Eyes is pretty good, it has some striking moments, Keitel is kinda funny when he goes really crazy. The Romero section is very poor.

His Dracula is supposed to have some of the Suspiria team. I think changes in the industry, ageing and other things don't really explain someone losing all their knowledge of making a film.
For an ageing filmmaker who isn't as popular, resources might be a big problem. I could easily imagine old horror directors being surrounded by submissive fans who aren't really that talented.

Peeping Tom (Powell)- One of those movies I've read about voluminously but taken forever to actually sit down and watch. Deeply grotty and unpleasant, which is all the more upsetting for how fundamentally sympathetic killer is (Manhunter definitely learned a lot from this, not to mention De Palma taking the basic premise of Lithgow's character in Raising Cain from here).

*Black Sabbath (Bava; Tim Lucas commentary)- Another Lucas track heavy on biographical info, but with some interesting insight into the development and production of the movie and some more appreciation for Bava's signature lighting and camera techniques now that he's working in color. Most interesting/devastating fact from the commentary: until the project was taken away with AIP and made into their own fairly crap movie with Dean Stockwell, Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" was almost developed as a Bava/Karloff film with the working title Scarlet Friday. The degree to which that would have fucking ruled is impossible to accurately measure and the world is an objectively worse place for it not happening.

Theorem (Pasolini)- I wasn't expecting this to be quite so...approachable, I guess? It's beautifully shot and kind of sweet and even funny, despite the self-consciously heavy philosophical content and Marxism and Catholic dread. I am basically an idiot as far as any film with religious subtext goes, and this is my first Pasolini, so I'm going to have to do some further reading.

Mr. Mike's Mondo Video (O'Donoghue)- Some bits go on far, far too long (the Hawaii Five-O church bit could have easily lost a full minute or two and been none the worse for wear) but I kind of love the low-budget, homemade feel of most of this. It's a weird mix of bits that could have fit into early SNL (the Jack Lord bit, "chicks dig creeps," some others), Americanized Monty Python (the opening and closing bits especially) and stuff that feels like it could fit into later shows like the Ben Stiller Show, Get a Life or Mr. Show. The entire thing's on Youtube, which is fine since the DVD is out of print and video quality doesn't really matter much. (sadly, I can't find a clip of MOUSE PRINCESS HIT BY TWO TRAINS, which is the dumbest fucking thing but almost made me piss myself laughing)

Re: commentary regulars. Kim Newman+Stephen Jones also did The Shout and I'm fairly sure they did Mark Of The Vampire. Those are the ones I've listened to anyway.
I think Alan Jones is with Jodorowsky on some Jodo films I bought recently.

I've heard that on one of the Hammer DVDs, Newman has an uncomfortable argument with one of the actresses on a commentary.

Thanks for the heads up on The Shout! I didn't even know there was a newer DVD than the mediocre 2003 Prism release, which is the only one listed on the US Amazon. I do know Jones is on the recent-ish DVD and blu-ray release of Santa Sangre.

Just checked Nebraska out of the library for the second time, and for the second time I don't think I'm gonna have time to watch it before its due back, so I guess I can safely wrap up June. Lotsa re-watches lately; was wrapping up another semester this month, and I think I tend to look at things I've seen before when my mind is preoccupied with other things, rather than let any new ideas in. Glad I saved the two new things I watched for after my term paper was handed in. They needed, and rewarded, my full attention.

*Funny Farm (Hill, 1988) 7/10
*Pink Flamingos (Waters, 1972) 7/10
Stranger by the Lake (Guiraudie, 2013) 9/10
*Election (Payne, 1999) 10/10
Her (Jonze, 2013) 9/10

Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mu, 1948) - pretty flat. The small town is a claustrophobic chamber of about five actors. The moral was simple and drove to a fairly predictable end. Its not that interesting to sell this as contrast to the communist fare being peddled around at the same time.

When I saw you (Annemarie Jacir, 2012) - one of the first almost entirely (?) Palestinian made features. Wasn't entirely feeling it.

Remembrance of Things to Come (Chris Marker, 2003) - late cine-essay. Not bad, but the voice and music narrating and sound-tracking are off, so this bit of undercover surrealism is falling flat as well.

Flatness all round. Not a great run at the mo.

I talked more about it in the post2005horror thread but since all the talk of giallo here, I gotta say that Strange Color Of Your Bodies Tears is wonderful and probably better than Amer. One of my favourite films of the past few years.

xp gonna see that fei film tomorrow, that summary is unencouraging. I've had a decent run recently: Heli, Long Live The Republic, Little Fugitive, Wrony, La jaula de oro, Chef, The Man Whose Mind Exploded, Godzilla, Batman: Year One, Chef, We Are The Best!

no years of release or ratings but I enjoyed all to varying extents, I like everything tho

I was drinking way too much before so I might be off base, but the friend I was also with agreed - hope you find it better.

I want to see more films: Camille Claudel 1915, Of Horses and Men. World Cup taking over everything right now.

I swear to god if I see Ninetto Davoli ONE MORE TIME I will tear the screen apart with my bare hands

EVEN IF IT IS A TELEVISION

^^^ haha. Don't mind him except when Pasolini puts him in a Little Tramp getup
and goes for the "homage" . Was it in "Decameron"? Not sure.

Under The Skin (8/10)
Lou Lou ( 8/10)
Double Suicide (7/10)

The Chaplin routine is in Canterbury Tales, though for me that was Davoli at his most tolerable- at least there he was aping someone who's actually funny! His parts in the other two Trilogy of Life films (and his bizarre, tone-shattering cameo in Theorem as the dancing, arm-flapping, possibly developmentally disabled mailman) just seem to proceed from Pasolini's assumption that we'll find him just as adorable as the director does, so why bother writing him a character?

That, and there's a weird sort of reaction shot Pasolini seems to elicit from all of his male actors in the Trilogy, this kind of goony expectant grin, usually with an audible "huh-huh" on the soundtrack, that is just unbelievably irritating to me.

I'm coming across way too negatively for films I did, overall, enjoy; I'm just suffering from Davoli Fatigue. I'll try and type up something a little more coherent tomorrow.

Oh and: thanks to good ol' Triple P, I have now seen Doctor Who's cock, so there's that.

expiring soon from my Netflix extravaganza:

mission impossible: ghost protocol (2011, brad bird): 3.5/5
bang the drum slowly (1973, john hancock): 3.5/5 (did people REALLY think that DeNiro trying to be a cracker was THAT convincing back then?!?)
robinson crusoe on mars (1964, bryon haskins): 3.5/5 (mad men LOL it's the 1960s moment -- when the main character calls Friday a retard)
captain kronos - vampire hunter (1974, brian clemons): 3.5/5 (old school po-faced horror)

Hey Robert, not to be a giant creep, but good to see you on Sarah Horrocks' blog! Her HMOD thing kind of pointed me toward my current giallo obsession (and probably unsustainable between-semesters movie-watching pace), and I'm the anon who suggested The Perfume of the Lady in Black a couple weeks ago.

It's great to hear some positive feedback on Strange Color, too. Mainstream reviewers have been pretty negative, but I love Amer (and the hilariously portentous Strange Color trailer cut to Justice) so I've been crossing my fingers for Olive (or anybody really) to pick it up for US release.

Obvious Child (4/10)
Twilight ('98 Robert Benton movie 6/10)

The Decameron (Pasolini)
The Canterbury Tales (Pasolini)
The Arabian Nights (Pasolini): International House Philadelphia showed all three parts of Pasolini's Trilogy of Life from original 35mm prints this weekend, so I couldn't say no. I can admire these films, but I couldn't really get on Pasolini's wavelength. Ninetto Davoli aside (I WILL END YOU, YOU HARPO MARX-LOOKIN' MOTHERFUCKER), a lot of his choices in framing, camera movement (or, more frequently, the lack of camera movement) and editing felt unnecessarily distancing in an attempt to invoke medieval portraiture and devotional painting. The production design was phenomenal, though- Dante Ferretti across all three films, a name I remember from being obsessed with Julie Taymor's ridiculous and equally gorgeous Titus as a kid. Canterbury Tales was the most enjoyable for me, partly because of a more clearly defined structure and feeling more, well, cinematic- things like the Little Tramp sequence with Davoli and its undercranked chase scenes and slapstick. By the time Arabian Nights ended, one million hours of Ninetto Davoli later, I was just worn out on exuberance and barely-motivated dick shots. I think I might enjoy Arabian Nights more if I revisited it on its own; on first viewing, the nested stories-within-stories structure (with its frequently unclear breaks between narratives and cutting in between several concurrent stories at different "levels") was just exhausting and tended to obscure brilliant locations and mise en scene and Ennio Morricone's best work out of all three movies.

*Peeping Tom (Powell) (Laura Mulvey commentary)- This was fascinating. Mulvey is a Lacanian, which I don't really have the academic background or personal inclination to get fully behind, but while I'm embarrassed to admit this is the first I've heard of her, she put together some of the Freudian and Lacanian concepts I do understand in a fairly lively and engaging way, and paid special attention to camera setups, movement, and editing rhythms, something many commentators gloss over in favor of talking about mise en scene or performances. I'm kind of amused that she never remarks on all the key symbolism in the film- maybe there is such a thing as a too-obvious castration symbol?

*Sisters (De Palma)- I totally and unabashedly love this movie, and watching for the first time in years soon after the Mulvey commentary was an interesting experience. Sisters literally opens with a gameshow-within-the-movie called Peeping Toms, and plays with the idea of the gendered gaze in really fascinating ways. And of course, it has literally castrating violence- both of the violent onscreen murders feature gratuitous stabs and slashes to the crotch. Also notable for one of Herrmann's best ever non-Hitchcock scores. I didn't know this until going over the extras in detail (side note: Arrow's De Palma blu-rays/DVDs are fucking ace; the "visual essay" format used for Justin Humphreys' discussion instead of a commentary might actually be a better medium), but that's not a theremin in the title theme but an early Moog Modular.

Next up is Phantom of the Paradise, which I haven't seen before but oh my god do I ever want to.

Laura Mulvey's essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' is p much the defining document of 70s Feminist/Lacanian film theory :

http://imlportfolio.usc.edu/ctcs505/mulveyVisualPleasureNarrativeCinema.pdf

The BFI have recently released a set of two excellent experimental/avant-garde films Mulvey made w/ Peter Wollen at round abt the same time she wrote VP and NC:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/blu-rays-dvds/riddles-sphinx

Mulvey also wrote a good BFI classic monograph on Citizen Kane, and her commentary on the Region BFI disc of Rossellini's Journey to Italy is also of interest. Didn't know she'd recorded a commentary on Peeping Tom - is that for a US release? There's a UK DVD of Peeping Tom w/ a pretty comprehensive commentary by Powell/Pressburger expert Ian Christie (even if he does make a bad error about the Carry On films right at the start of the track).

Love the Pasolini's despite the occassional sloppiness and excess of gratuitous dick n' Davoli. They're probably too much to watch in one sitting though I'd imagine.

The Idiots (Von Trier, 1998)
Cleo From 5 to 7 (Varda, 1962)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960)
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950)
Bright Future (Kurosawa, 2003)
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... And Spring (Kim, 2003)
Modern Times (Chaplin, 1946)
DIG! (Timoner, 2004)

Highlights here were Sunset Boulevard and Spring, Summer etc. Half of these I watched on Mubi, and half were from my university library. I was surprised how good Spring, Summer etc. was.

Ward- thanks for the summary, and especially the link. I'd heard of the essay but didn't know it was her (and hadn't read it yet anyway)- I'll fix that right away. I did find the Riddle of the Sphinx blu-ray and Kane monograph, but I didn't know about the Rossellini commentary. The Mulvey commentary is on the OOP Criterion DVD. I'm not sure why it's no longer available, to be honest- I would assume all the Archer films are held by the same company, but The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus remain available (in gorgeous restorations, no less) while Peeping Tom and Tales of Hoffmann are long since out of print.

The rights to the oop Criterion Powell/Pressburgers are controlled by Studio Canal, who now have an exclusive distro deal in the US with Lionsgate, who've reissued a whopping 10% or so of said oop CC titles.

Ugh. I was wondering if it was a similar situation, not realizing that it was *the exact same* situation. What's even worse is that they're continuing to release blu-rays of this stuff overseas with the same packaging and "StudioCanal Collection"* branding- I found out only yesterday that they put out a special edition of Joseph Losey's The Servant, which is also totally unavailable on home video in the US.

*what the hell is up with that, anyway? Isn't StudioCanal a 100% corporate entity, and a fairly young one at that? Do they really expect people to give a shit?

Anchor Bay used to have The Servant out in a long gone Bogarde box.

Phantom of the Paradise (De Palma): BEST MOVIE.

Telephone Thing- It takes a lot more creeping than that to creep me out. If I hadn't seen you mention PotLiB at both her tumblr and here I might not have picked up the film (which has still to come in the post), one enthusiast can make all the difference.

Another film I've been praising on the horror threads is Panna A Netvor, the very beautiful Juraj Herz version of Beauty And The Beast. If anyone has a major thing for gothic film scenery, this is a must.

My favorite version of "Beauty And The Beast"! Gorgeous and nightmarish.

That sounds awesome- I loved The Cremator (and Morgiana is on my to-watch list as soon as I can find a way to do it on the cheap), Cocteau's B&tB is one of my favorite films of all time, and I love me some castles and candelabras.

balls out: the gary houseman story (leinier, 2009) 6/10
penumbra (bogliano, 2012) 6/10
brimstone and treacle (davis, 1976) 8/10
blade on the feather (loncraine, 1980) 8/10
nebraska (payne, 2013) 7/10
jodorowsky's dune (pavich, 2013) 7/10

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Webb, 2014) 5/10
X-Men Days of Future Past (Singer, 2014) 6/10
Godzilla 3D (Roberts, 2014) 4/10
Je Tu Il Elle (Akerman, 1974) 8/10
Stray Dogs (Tsai, 2013) 8/10

Ace in the Hole (Wilder, 1951) 7/10
The Great Dictator (Chaplin, 1940) 6/10
The Music Room (Ray, 1958) 8/10
The Abominable Dr Phibes (Fuest, 1971) 7/10

Twilight ('98 Robert Benton movie 6/10)

I caught a sneak screening of this back then, and was worried one of the 70ish stars would break a hip in the final shootout.

*The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, Wyler) 9/10
Night Moves (2013, Reichardt) 7/10
*Fists in the Pocket (1965, Bellocchio) 8/10
Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley (1918, Neilan/Pickford) 6/10
Claire Dolan (1998, Kerrigan) 7/10
A Run for Your Money (1949, Frend) 6/10
The Card (1952, Neame) 7/10
We Still Kill the Old Way (1967, Petri) 6/10
*Dead Ringers (1988, Cronenberg) 8/10
Ms. 45 (1981, Ferrara) 5/10
Ida (2013, Pawlikowski) 6/10
Test (2013, Johnson) 6/10
The Captain's Paradise (1953, Kimmins) 6/10
Norte, the End of History (2013, Diaz, slept some) 7/10
*Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972, Herzog) 10/10
Stage Fright (1950, Hitchcock) 6/10
The New Centurions (1972, Fleischer) 6/10
The Breaking Point (1950, Curtiz) 8/10
Exhibition (2014, Hogg) 8/10

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz: Somewhat ashamed that I knew pretty much nothing about him. (I vaguely remember a Sullivan post when he died.) An ILX search didn't turn up more than a handful of posts and no threads. Conventional as a film, but quite a story. Would love to show it to students, but three or four fleeting bits of profanity rule that out (one of them, I wouldn't be able to work around). Would have preferred less crying at the end--just a thing with me.

Lego movie really surprised me. I hadn't read the hype or anyhting at that point so I just watched it, and I especially like what they did at the end with the dad/son dynamic

Norte, the End of History (2013, Diaz, slept some) 7/10

lol u old.

sleep-deprived from meds too

Jokes etc.

Looking forward to that film in a couple of weeks.

The Driver (8/10)
Pina (7/10)
Story Of Floating Weeds (1959) ( 9/10)

Twilight ('98 Robert Benton movie 6/10)

I caught a sneak screening of this back then, and was worried one of the 70ish stars would break a hip in the final shootout.

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius

The plot is more rickety than their hips, but the duets between Garner and Newman, and Newman and Hackman are marvelous. And was this the last time Susan Sarandon was watchable?

Maniac Cop (Lustig)- This was my first Bill Lustig movie, a man I really only know for running Blue Underground and directing four separate movies with "Maniac" in the title, but I've heard good things about Maniac Cop 2, I'm curious about the upcoming Refn-produced remake, and I love everything I've seen from Larry Cohen so I figured I'd rent this and see what was up. And it's quite good for what it is! Obviously I can't really tell what Lustig brings to the table (though from reviews of Maniac, I suspect that he toned down his grimy, horrific portrayal of pre-Giuliani NYC for this), but Cohen's fingerprints are all over it- it's an exemplary low-budget high-concept movie of the kind he's justly famous for. My only major qualm (aside from a couple of creaky performances and the weirdness of seeing Robert Z'Dar and his costar, Robert Z'Dar's Chin, in a "real" movie and not something like Future War or Soultaker) is that it doesn't take that high concept far enough. It gets that part of what's scary about the idea of a killer cop is that victims would trust him and run right to him, but abandons this fairly quickly (the script wastes little time having the lead cop agonize over breaking the news and moves right on to the public anti-cop backlash). Far scarier, at least to me, is the institutional power a cop represents and the scope for abuse, and with the killer operating (mostly) outside the police department, he only passively benefits from their unwillingness to believe one of their own could be responsible. And, okay, I'm a little confused as to whether Matt Cordell is supposed to be a half-dead brain-damaged monster or outright undead, but to anyone born in the 80's it's easy enough to shrug it off; he is, after all, A Jason (as distinct from A Frankenstein, A Dracula, etc). Good times.

The Legend of Hell House (Hough)- I went into this a bit underprepared. Though I've read about it endlessly and even own it on DVD, I haven't yet seen Robert Wise's The Haunting, the haunted house picture to which this and all others are inevitably compared. It's serviceable, has some excellent sets and locations (those exterior shots of the house in foggy daylight are wonderful) and I can't say enough about the sound design, which does more for the overall effect than any other element. The music is mostly subservient to ominous radiophonic droning from Delia Derbyshire, and the ghostly whispers are a particularly high-quality example of this kind of thing- mixed low enough in the soundtrack that they feel truly insidious, and to my ear sounding like they're whispered while sucking in a breath (try this, it sounds awful). The problem is it's just not scary at all. Roddy McDowall is a tremendous ham, the script (which feels like it was heavily condensed by Matheson from his novel) starts out removing any doubt about the existence of supernatural phenomena, reducing the characters' research to an explanatory footnote under HOLY SHIT ECTOPLASM AND TELEKINESIS ARE REAL, the resolution is bizarre and outright laughable, and if there's one thing I wish horror directors would learn it is this: cats are not scary. Cats have never been scary, and cats never will be scary.

Nightmares in Red, White and Blue (Monument)- Meh. This is pretty perfunctory stuff, going through most of the high points in American horror in chronological order, making superficial connections to the American political climate at the time they were made (hey guys, did you know that Dawn of the Dead is about 80's consumerism?), glossing over some of the most interesting and obscure material in favor of points everyone's heard a thousand times about, say, The Exorcist, and just generally falling between two stools- it's too basic for most horror fans, and too fast-paced and too reliant on commentary from cult figures (and some unknowns and marginal hacks) to really interest a newcomer to the genre. And about that commentary- John Carpenter and George Romero, god bless them, aren't exactly reclusive or tight-lipped, so why not let them talk for more than ten seconds at a time? The only point where it really shows any life is a Youtube-level supercut of violence and nudity from the Friday the 13th franchise. It ends with a similar quick-cut montage of unattributed highlights from international horror movies, but does almost nothing to lay out what makes American horror films different from other countries' horror cinema. Really disappointing.

*Sid & Nancy (Cox)
*Repo Man (Cox)- This was a double feature at Philly's Trocadero. $3 admission, a free beer, fucking terrible sound and an enthusiastic audience, which is about right for these two. I still feel kind of ambivalent about Sid & Nancy (I hate that audiences always end up laughing at Chloe Webb's Nancy, which is a tremendously brave and sad performance that's easily the best thing in the film, more deserving of praise than Oldman's Sid Vicious) but Repo Man is literally perfect in every way.

A Very British Psycho (Rodley)- a BBC4 documentary on Peeping Tom from 1997. This (and the Ultimate Performance doc on Donald Cammell) are how you do it- plenty of access to the subject, well-chosen interviewees, and a good throughline to hold it together. This is more about the life and career (artistic and otherwise) of writer Leo Marks, which was a perfect choice, because the guy (still alive at the time of filming) was utterly fascinating. It left me wanting to seek out not just his autobiography, which he finished after this aired, but Twisted Nerve (yes, the one with the Bernard Herrmann whistling), his other major screen credit.

(parentheses)

Obsession (De Palma)- Disappointing. De Palma, Vilmos Zsigmond, or some combination of the two make the bizarre decision to shoot the entire film with gauzy, vaseline-y diffuse lighting, which along with Herrmann's beautiful but overused score and a shocking lack of humor for a De Palma project (I blame Schrader) makes it just draaag. Cliff Robertson is a sour, crusty nonentity, Jon Lithgow should have been allowed at most two of his affectations (Foghorn Leghorn accent, seersucker suit, ridiculous mustache), and Genevieve Bujold is wonderful but can't do anything about the pace or disturbingly tasteful nature of the movie. Having read the screenplay, I think De Palma did the right thing by excising Schrader's third act and abridging the picture where he did, but if he'd left in some of the nastier elements it would have at least had a little more texture to it. I do want to call out the last scene, which is fucking amazing- the flicker of fluorescent lights on slow-motion film (I don't think this could be done digitally, at least not naturally in-camera as a byproduct of the process) is beautiful.

All About Eve (Mankiewicz)- This floored me. So wonderfully arch and acidic and nasty that I was genuinely shocked by the places it was willing to go. The second film I've seen George Sanders in recently; I liked him bringing the (low-key, genteel) sleaze in Rebecca but he's perfect in this. I probably don't need to say anything about Bette Davis beyond "I'm an idiot for not seeking out her movies sooner, holy shit."

The Whip and the Body (Bava)- Oh dear :( I wanted to like this so much- Bava's first feature-length gothic in full color, with Christopher Lee and some mild but daring for the time kink- but the script is just not there. After an opening shot I loved and would steal in a heartbeat if I were a filmmaker myself (the rusty dagger rattling under its bell jar) it dumps a huge chunk of exposition on us, gives us no time to work out the relationships between characters (there's a little of this close to the hour mark, but by then it's too late), and sets about doing nothing at all save for some Scooby-Doo tomb-skulking bullshit for most of its running time. Christopher Lee is dependably menacing because of course he is, he's Christopher goddamn Lee, but the English dub doesn't even feature his voice, and the nominal hero is just useless, even more so than in most Italian genre films, or Corman Poe gothics (which this definitely resembles).

Work completely consumed the 2nd half of June for me. Nothing but --

The Red Balloon (Lamorisse, 1956)
Stranger by the Lake (Guiraudie, 2013)