Cover your ears for 'The Shout'

CONFESSIONS OF A GEN-X PREMIUM CABLE JUNKIE: THE SHOUT (1978)

By Bob Ignizio

THE MEMORIES

It may seem odd to begin a series of blog posts aboutnostalgic movie memories with a film I didn’t actually see until just a few days ago, but allow me to explain. When my family first got Star Channel, the trailer for THE SHOUT seemed to be played almost constantly. I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on in this trailer, but it sure looked freaky. Must have looked freaky to my parents, too, as they made it clear I would not be watching this movie. And since I hadn’t quite yet worked out how to “sneak watch” movies I wasn’t supposed to see (that would come soon), I was out of luck.

Nonetheless, the trailer made an impression.

Given this fact, you’d think I would have rented the movie on VHS at some point in the eighties. But while Columbia did release the film on tape at some point, I don’t recall ever seeing it on the shelves of any of my local video stores. As for DVD, I don’t believe the film ever had an official release in the U.S. on that format. Across the pond, England got a DVD in 2003, and again in 2007, and there was a Blu Ray release in 2014. But aside from the fact that these releases just weren’t on my radar, they were all region coded, and I don’t have a region free player.

Thankfully, THE SHOUT is (for the moment, at least) available to stream in the U.S. on Amazon Prime, which is how I finally got around to seeing it.

Art and politics make a potent blend in 'The Cordillera of Dreams' (March 5th and 6th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE CORDILLERA OF DREAMS screens Thursday March 5^th at 6:30 pm and Friday March 6^th at 9:40pm.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Director Patricio Guzman fled Chile, the country of his birth, in the mid-seventies to escape the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. He remains an expatriate to this date. But although he no longer lives there, he keeps returning to make films, seeking to understand his country and the lasting impact Pinochet continues to exert even after death.

Starting with 2010’s NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT, Guzman has made a series of films exploring the intersection of Chile’s past and present. He has done this by focusing on various regions, beginning with the Atacama Desert in NOSTALGIA, moving south to Patagonia in 2015’s THE PEARL BUTTON, and now focusing on the Andes mountain region in his latest film, THE CORDILLERA OF DREAMS.

Genre Tropes and Arthouse Pretensions Combine in 'Let The Corpses Tan'

[LET THE CORPSES TAN screens Sunday November 25th 2018 at 6:30 pm and Monday November 26th 2018 at 8:45 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

 

You can’t say that LET THE CORPSES TAN doesn’t have a plot. It’s just that co-directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzaniand seem less concerned with the straight-forward crime story their film hangs on than in conjuring up striking imagery informed by fetishized B-movie tropes and art house pretensions. They don’t care about the assortment of crooks, cops, and artistic outcasts who inhabit their sunbaked neo-noir spaghetti western, and neither do we. So all that’s left is to sit back and look at the pretty pictures.

To be honest, that’s good enough at times. There are some shots here worthy of Jodorowsky, such as one scene in which a woman is bound tightly with ropes by a group of men until champagne starts spouting from her breast, a scene which exists apart from the storyline and serves purely as symbolism. Most of the film, however, is an all-day shootout between the various parties. Plenty of compelling visuals in that aspect, as well, but not enough to alleviate the tedium.