Inn of the Damned (1975)

Inn of the Damned was the first Australian western. It’s also a horror western. It wasn’t the world’s first horror western but this was (and is) are rare subgenre although I’ve never understood why.

There’s an obvious spaghetti western influence. I guess this could be called a Vegemite western!

It’s beautifully shot and it looks like a western but not quite. This doesn’t look quite like the American West. I suspect that this was a deliberate move to give the visuals a slightly unusual flavour.

This was producing team Rod Hay and Terry Bourke’s follow-up to the notorious Night of Fear with Bourke once again writing and directing.

Initially it seems like a standard western. An American bounty hunter, Cal Kincaid (played by American import Alex Cord), has been recruited to hunt down the notorious outlaw and killer Biscayne (Robert Quilter). The local law enforcement are not entirely comfortable with this. Kincaid is paired (against his will because by nature he’s a loner) with Trooper Moore (Tony Bonner). Moore is very much a do-it-by-the-numbers military type and Kincaid is a lone wolf but they develop a certain respect.

Biscayne seems to have a connection with the Bildara Inn and odd things have happened there. Guests have disappeared. Now gold assayist Cummings and his travelling companion, a friendly prostitute, have vanished. They had been on their way to the inn. The old German couple who run the inn insist they haven’t seen these two. Trooper Moore isn’t entirely satisfied but he’s not sure why.

At this point we start to realise that this may not be the story we thought it was going to be. And Kincaid is starting to have some nagging doubts.

The movie now becomes more of a full-blown horror movie than a western. And as in Night of Fear the impact of the horror doesn’t rely purely on gore.

Two more guests arrive at the inn - Mrs Millington (Diana Dangerfield) and Beverley (Carla Hoogeveen). We assume that Beverley is her stepdaughter. Mrs Millington displays what might be seen as a not entirely appropriate affection (an affection of a physical nature) for her stepdaughter. It’s clear that Beverley has in the past reciprocated these affections but now she’s decided that it’s wicked and she threatens to tell her Dad.

Given that Diana Dangerfield and Carla Hoogeveen spend almost all their screen time naked one might assume that this is just a way of adding some commercially desirable exploitation elements (which would have been a smart move) but it does add an extra helping of perversity to an already perverse movie and so it’s keeping with the overall tone.

It builds to a very suspenseful climax.

There’s not a huge amount of gore. It’s the twisted bizarre motivations that provide the real horrors.

Judith Anderson was lured back to her native country to star as the old German woman running the inn. She’s very good without going too far over the top.

Alex Cord at the time seemed about to make the transition to major stardom, which sadly never happened. He just never got that big breakthrough role. He’s an excellent hero here. He doesn’t try too hard with the tough guy thing but we get the message that Kincaid is a formidable guy and he’s smart as well as tough.

There are lots of fine Australian actors here with John Meillon amusing as Biscayne’s hopeless drunken accomplice. Tony Bonner provides a perfect contrast in styles to Alex Cord. Carla Hoogeveen must have been delighted that she actually gets to speak in this one (unlike Night of Fear).

Terry Bourke keeps the momentum going. The action scenes are good. It’s a polished handsome production with terrific location shooting.

I just love the horror western idea and Inn of the Damned carries it off well. Highly recommended. 

I’ve also reviewed Terry Bourke’s previous effort, the superb Night of Fear. 

Sisters (1972)

The release of Sisters in 1972 marked the arrival of Brian De Palma as a director. Before that he’d made lots of experimental avant-garde stuff, much of it totally improvised. By 1972 he had realised what a waste of time such stuff was. Sisters was his first real movie. There’s nothing improvised here. De Palma had it all planned out. Sisters was made on a low budget but it’s polished and professional. It gets seriously weird and perverse and twisty but De Palma is in complete control.

He unsettles us right from the start. Why are we watching a goofy TV game show? Well, the goofy TV game show is called Peeping Toms and it sets the stage for a movie that deals heavily in voyeurism.

He’s doing some serious riffing on Rear Window early on and he’s being very open about it. A woman is looking out her window and sees a murder through the window of another building across a courtyard. Just like Rear Window. In Rear Window the witness is a photojournalist. In Sisters the witness is Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt), a journalist. And like L.B. Jefferies in Rear Window she has not a shred of hard evidence. 

But De Palma is playing with us because he’s doing some riffing on another Hitchcock movie as well but to reveal the name of that movie would give away a major spoiler. 

Then the major plot strand kicks in. The murderess, a cute French-Canadian model named Danielle (Margot Kidder) has a sister, Dominique. And that’s a really bizarre story that is  slowly unfolded.

The murder victim might have escaped had he recognised the presence of Danielle’s ex-husband Emil shadowing her constantly as a red flag but he had no reason to be suspicious. He cannot be blamed for accepting Danielle’s explanation at face value. Like so much in this story the ex-husband is not what he seems to be.

Grace’s newspaper hires a private detective to help her out and he provides some amusement. There are in fact some very funny moments in this film, which help De Palma to unsettle us just a little more.

De Palma is doing more than homaging scenes from Hitchcock movies. He’s exploring territory that Hitchcock explored in numerous movies - questions of identity and reality. Things, and people, are not what they seem to be.

Split screen, a technique very rarely seen today, had been used lots of time before but no-one has ever used it more cleverly than De Palma. He doesn’t just use it in an obvious way to show us the action from two points of view he also uses it to show us different actions occurring simultaneously which ramps up the suspense and accelerates the pacing.

This starts as a suspense thriller but will become a very creepy horror movie. And it’s a woman-in-peril movie with a real twist.

For all its twists and perversities and its over-the-top ending the plot of Sisters hangs together surprisingly well.

There is some body horror (De Palma being a bit Cronenbergian before Cronenberg) but he’s more interested in the psychological mutilation inflicted on the sisters.

De Palma’s pacing is faultless and given that this was his first major foray into this territory his mastery of the techniques of suspense is impressive. And De Palma demonstrates his ability to be clever without being gimmicky.

William Finlay as Emil is creepily enigmatic and Charles Durning as the private eye is quite fun but the acting performance that matters is that of Margot Kidder and she’s excellent - very sweet and very scary.

To make it all even more Hitchcockian Bernard Herrmann did the music.

Sisters might be De Palma’s first real movie but it is a real De Palma movie and a very good one with his personal signature very much in evidence. Highly recommended.

The Criterion Blu-Ray looks OK.