#jonas middleton

[pierppasolini]

Through the Looking Glass (1976) // dir. Jonas Middleton

[thewitchofwonders]

through the looking glass, dir. jonas middleton (1976)

[thirtytwoelvismovies]

Through the Looking Glass | Jonas Middleton | 1976

This should stand on its own as one of the top gothic horror flicks of the ‘70s. Unsettling, spooky, disturbing psycho-sexual melodrama splashed with Satyricon-esque garishness. Joao Fernandes, who lensed Damiano’s horror flick Memories Within Miss Aggie, is behind the camera. An astoundingly good score by Arlon Ober and an uncredited Harry Manfredini — hard to miss those tch-tch-tch violin bows. I’ve been sitting on a digital file of this film for years but never watched it. Glad I waited for Mélusine’s new 4K release.

[marypickfords]

Through the Looking Glass (Jonas Middleton, 1976)

[moratoirenoir]

[tvln]

through the looking glass (us, middleton 76)

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/25/2021: JUST BEFORE DAWN (1981)

This is one of my favorite discoveries of the year. After quickly churning out the worms-amok movie SQUIRM, and the wildly unpredictable drug scare film BLUE SUNSHINE, one might think that a slasher flick about horny campers would be beneath writer-director Jeff Lieberman's fertile imagination. However, JUST BEFORE DAWN is engrossing, atmospheric, and as deeply freaky as the much-maligned subgenre can get.

Ignoring the warnings of a hysterical drunk babbling about demons, a gun-toting hillbilly family trying to scare them off, and a stern forest ranger (George Kennedy) just trying to talk sense, Constance (Deborah Benson) and her friends set up camp deep in a backwoods property that one of them has just inherited. Although Constance has the most experience handling herself in the wild, she also has the least self-confidence, freezing up helplessly at the boys' obnoxious pranks. Her embarrassment about her lack of survival instincts compounds her fear of the strange sounds, including an unnatural whistling noise, closing in on the group from the woods. Constance will have to find a way to pull herself together when her friends start falling prey to not one, but two machete-toting inbred monstrosities (played by the gleefully perverse John Hunsaker) of whom "demons" is a pretty fair description.

The typical simplicity of this slasher plot is compensated for by the robust characterizations of its cast and environment. Cinematographers Dean and Joel King infuse Oregon's spectacular Silver Falls State Park with a sinister gravity, allowing the killer twins to creep around the edges of the frame, cloaked in fog, hidden in the water, building up enormous potential energy that explodes when they finally make their terrifying appearance. This tension is complimented by Deborah Benson's pensive, internalizing performance as Constance, whose struggle to convince herself that everything is fine is as relatable as it is tragic. Let's face it, slasher movie victims often meet with audience contempt for their inability to react quickly and heroically to their situation, but in reality, most of us could not soberly acknowledge the outrageousness of a JUST BEFORE DAWN-type of experience until it was far too late. This truth is reflected in the behavior of Constance's boyfriend Warren (Gregg Henry, how were you ever so young?), whose youthful nonchalance prevents him from ever wrapping his mind around their catastrophic circumstances, right up to the movie's genuinely shocking conclusion.

I would be remiss if I did not credit Brad Fiedel's important contribution to JUST BEFORE DAWN's climate of worry and doom. Some readers might recognize the composer's name from the credits of FRIGHT NIGHT and FRIGHT NIGHT 2; virtually all readers will remember his work on THE TERMINATOR and TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. His moody, distorted electronic score for DAWN helps make the movie what it is, and if anybody can find a complete soundtrack, please let me know!

If I have one gripe about JUST BEFORE DAWN it is, unfairly, that it isn't Edwin and Summer Brown's THE PREY, the existentialist camper-killer masterpiece from just a couple years later. Watching JUST BEFORE DAWN, it's hard not to think about THE PREY if you've seen it before, though the latter has a more potent philosophy. The Browns' villain is the victim of a nature disaster who has transformed into the wrath of nature itself, dealing with disrespectful interlopers appropriately. Many other viewers of DAWN have compared it with THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE HILLS HAVE EYES; Lieberman claimed not to have seen either of those classic rural slashers at the time, but confessed to following the example of DELIVERANCE. That story is really about a culture clash, in which a group of condescending urbanites treat a remote mountain community like a tourist destination. The protagonists assume a social hierarchy with themselves on top, and rural people trapped in some primitive state of development, bringing up themes of classism, eugenics, and manifest destiny. Whether or not we think the weekend warriors deserve their horrific punishment, we understand that they've asked for it on some level by disrespecting cultural differences and territorial boundaries. JUST BEFORE DAWN doesn't establish as complex a point of view as any of the soundalikes listed here, and in fact, the central problem is identified glibly as a genetic one. When the gang first arrives in town, they all take notice of its preponderance of twins, remarking that there must be "something in the water," or just a lot of inbreeding. We ultimately understand that the killers really are the products of incest, a curse that one family failed to either prevent or control. This opens the door for a discussion of the subject of disability and biological difference as cites of monstrosity in horror movies, especially as the original signifier is something as ordinary as twins. I don't think I'm the appropriate voice to discuss this fertile topic, but I'd be interested to hear such an analysis whenever it comes around.

[pierppasolini]

Through the Looking Glass (1976) // dir. Jonas Middleton