Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux Sans Visage) (1960)

90 minutes – French (Subtitled in English) – Unrated but I would give it an PG-13 for dread, some very bloody scenes, and creepy atmosphere.

Guilt is a terrible thing. I cannot imagine a single person reading this who has not felt guilty for something in their life. Guilt has an extreme power over normal human beings. Guilt can slowly unhinge us, causing a very negative change and maybe even becoming the monster we think we are. Guilt can also push us into the light, forcing us to atone for our guilt by doing good deeds. The thought of people discovering our secret guilt is scary. That sort of thing is a weak point, a big glaring example of why we feel we may not be worthy of kindness or happiness. If people found out, they would do something to condemn us, giving us the punishment we always imagine. However, people are human and atonement, acceptance, and change are very real concepts. We do not need to hide in the shadows, at least not from ourselves. The future is not yet written and you can be a better person and outweigh the sins of the past.

There is a tradition of masks in horror movies which is how I found out about this movie in the first place. Most of us clearly remember the iconic masks of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees but there are so many more. Ghostface from Scream, Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the deadly masks from Halloween 3 and another deadly mask in The Abominable Dr. Phibes also come to mind. There is even a prominent mask in one of the movies that I will be reviewing for the 31st this year. Masks weird us out because not seeing somebody’s face makes us uncomfortable. I talked earlier this month about the same effect that a clown’s face paint has. We cannot judge the true expressions of the person and therefore it is harder to judge their intentions. Also, it makes them look less human and anything less than human is something to be wary of. Finally, we cannot see what is under the mask and so we are left to imagine what must be under there. In that uncertainty, there could be anything beneath the mask especially the mask of somebody or something you know is a killer. I will be exploring this idea again next week.

The first thing I noticed about this movie was the great sound design in it. A good sound design can definitely enhance a good horror movie and make a great horror movie. This is especially true of older horror films where they had a low budget and could not rely on jump scares or expensive visual effects. This film does a great job using silence, something that newer horror projects do not use as much. There are long stretches of silence or periods where we just hear sound effects and no dialogue or music. The music, when it comes, is truly maddening as most of it makes use of the same musical motif which sounds chaotic and ratchets up the tension. It makes moments of true horror all the more shocking as they made me jump. The film is in black and white which is a sign of the times but it helps with the mood of the film, all light and shadows. The sets are simple but well-dressed like a Hitchcock film.

Tension is the main game here as this is a slow burn horror film. We find out what is going on early on in the film but the driving action waits until we are prepared for it. The tension must be high so that the existential horror really hits us. Edith Scob plays the titular woman who has had an accident which has removed her face, leaving only her eyes. She is absolutely spellbinding. The mask they constructed for her is so good and so creepy and she is a brilliant actress. She does so much with those eyes that I often forget that she is wearing an expressionless mask. I felt tense in every scene she was in as she was an unknown quantity, a desperate woman yearning to return to humanity and the true driving force of the movie. Her father is played by Pierre Brasseur and his gruff, detached manner is horrible to watch as he thinks about and does horrible things. Since the movie is actually mostly dialogless, many of the actors do so much with the movements of their bodies and sometimes just the way they breathe. I really loved that.

Overall, I really loved this movie and it is definitely the best movie I have reviewed so far this month. The movie starts with deep existential horror as it tackles things like lost, ennui and isolation. Then it moves on to actual, tangible horror including blood and violence but also guilt and insanity as well. I was really left shaken by this one as the director really nailed his goal of “anguish” very well.

Wisdom Teeth

I am sitting here seven hours removed from getting half of my wisdom teeth and a broken tooth removed. The surgery was a success and was fairly brief despite a few extra complications. I promised my brother I would try to write this post. We both thought it would be funny to read a post written while I was high as a kite. However, as you can see, I am a bit disappointed in that regard

I am currently on Hydrocodone. It took a while to kick in for this first dose, turning my torture into a dull roar. The bleeding is going down bit by bit but it is still impressive. So far so good. However, I am a little disappointed that I’m not goofy and babbling. You see, I really have never done drugs. I occasionally have a bit of whiskey, I have used Tylenol PM, and I have been in the same room while people smoked pot. I thought this might be my big chance to get high with a good excuse but no dice.

I will tell you a few things I remember from the event this morning. It’s blessedly little. I got to the office and signed in and was escorted to my throne. I talked to one of the nurses and got a chance to bash Tom Brady a bit together. I noticed that while I sat there, they were blasting classical music in the hallways. Curiously, this included the French National Anthem and the 1812 Overture. Great, I was going to get teeth extracted while the French Revolution was going on in the hallway.

Then the surgeon walked in who is a really suave straight shooter. The first words out of his mouth were how Hurricane Irma had just canceled his 35th wedding anniversary in January at St. Bart’s. This should have been in poor taste but it made me laugh, disarming me. (Edit: This is now in poor taste again). Then he put me out and I woke up to be taken to meet my family members who were waiting to haul me out of there.

I noticed that I had an ice pack tied to my head. I thought I must have looked like Jacob Marley. Everybody kept insisting on talking to me while my mouth was full of gauze. Then they told me not to talk. No fair. But, I can’t fault my loved ones for trying to engage me to make sure that I was alright and to keep me from worrying about the impending pain and blood. I am sitting here desperately waiting to be able to take the gauze out so I can talk again. I have so far only gobbled a single yogurt all day today. (Edit: In the next 36 hours I only had yogurt).

The medicine does make me doze every so often. I will wake up and watch some YouTube or browse the web on my phone but social media are forbidden until I can trust myself. I’m already bored! I’m allowed to be. If I do get loopy, I will post it here in whatever form it takes.

Edit: It is now Sunday night and things are looking up. There is not much pain but the left side of my lower lip and part of my chin are still numb. I have a huge bruise on the left side of my face. I am carefully chewing food on the right side of my mouth but it makes me paranoid. The bleeding has long since stopped and the swelling is down. This has been no walk in the park and it is not over but I feel a lot better about everything.

The Cure For What Ailed Me Pt. 3

When we last left off, I had finally received a confirmed diagnosis of Double Aortic Arch. To this day, doctors still do not know exactly what causes the condition but they think it may be genetic. Whatever caused it, I was born with a congenital heart defect. This was an amazing find because it is a very rare defect. It was also an amazing find because, like Cystic Fibrosis, it usually kills babies fairly quickly after birth. I was born with it but I survived over ten years without it being detected. I am so lucky that I did not die. I could have easily keeled over and they would have diagnosed me in an autopsy. The thought both makes me feel good and it also terrifies me.

Wow, that was dark. Let me remind you that this has a happy ending and I am not a ghost.

The doctors told my mom that not only did things look bad but with each passing day, they were getting worse. My body was slowly strangling me from the inside and there was no chance of it healing on its own. Medical intervention was absolutely necessary and that means that I had to go into surgery and soon. My mother, knowing that Halloween is my favorite holiday, asked if the surgery could wait. The doctors told her in no uncertain terms that the surgery could not wait. They told her why. One night, my parents sat me down at the dinner table that I had grown to dread. They told me what was wrong with me and they told me that I had to go into surgery.

I would be going as a sick kid for Halloween.

I sobbed and begged for it not to be true. I remember being on my mother’s lap, my heart seized with fear like never before or since. I cried and cried but tears do not change reality. They told me that if I did not have the surgery I would lose the ability to walk and then I would die. I had to be in surgery soon and I had to learn to accept that. I told my friends and my mother told the school and they were all behind me. I wish I could say that this made anything better. I remember going into the hospital for a consultation with the surgeon. He sat me down and drew simple little pictures and told me what he was going in to do. He was kind and although it did not make me any less scared, I know I appreciated at least knowing what was happening. Knowing is almost always better.

Nothing funny here. This was the inspiration for my character Lennon Clarke.

The day of the surgery came in almost no time at all. The night before, I was given the usual order to not eat or drink anything. This had to be enforced by my folks because I get cranky when I do not eat. As a concession to my young age, they allowed me to drink apple juice but only a little bit to keep my blood sugar up. They brought me into the hospital. Having been briefed on my fear of needles, they numbed my arms before they injected me. At some point, a troll doll from the school store was put into my hands and I clutched it tightly. As the drugs started to take effect, I cursed at whoever would listen and I told them that my parents were lawyers and they better take good care of me. They pumped enough drugs in me to put down a horse. I started singing the Animaniacs theme on loop and then I blacked out.

I was quickly getting zany to the max…

It was hours later when I awoke in the Intensive Care Unit. I was still alive. Not only that, but I was told that the operation was successful. I was in pain but happy that the scariest event of my life was all over except for the healing. As a reward, I got to watch Disney’s Aladdin on heavy drugs. It remains one of my favorite films to this day. I do not remember much else from the ICU except for fading in and out of consciousness and the occasional sponge bath. They had deflated one of my lungs to get at my heart and there would be a lot of healing. Eventually, they decided that I was out of danger and moved me up to a room to recuperate. Once there, I became a more difficult patient.

I had my own fight going on so I felt for Link.

I happily ate applesauce and watched television. However, it took me a while to kind of learn how to go to the bathroom again. I insisted I could do it and I would struggle my way to the bathroom and then nada. I was stuck with a catheter for a while. As they decreased the drugs they gave me, I hurt more but hurting is part of healing. While in the hospital, I got the entire set of Aliens action figures including the Alien Queen. There was a hospital visit from Captain Planet and I got Wheeler’s fire ring and also Linka’s wind ring. When I got a little better, I would make the long and painful journey to the game room to play Legend of Zelda on the NES. I never had enough time to get anywhere in the game but controlling Link made me happy.

Stay tuned next week for part 4 which will probably be the epilogue!

The Cure for What Ailed Me Pt. 1

I have danced around this story for quite some time especially in April. I searched my archives to see if I have told this story and I could not find it. Of course, I do not have time to comb through over 500 posts to make myself completely sure. I am not going to stress about it. I want to tell this story right because it is such an important part of my life. So welcome to the tale of that time I got life-changing surgery.

I have always been a short guy. When I was a little kid, my pediatrician constantly talked about how I was at the lowest end of the growth chart. I was the shortest kid in my class and I was something approaching underweight. I was a happy boy but I was also kind of a frail boy. This is very disconcerting for a kid who grew up reading comics and watching Power Rangers. The power of friendship and kindness in your heart only got you so far. Eventually, I would have to punch something. More importantly, I was reminded at every turn that I was not as big or athletic as the other kids. I was the only male who sat on the floor for class pictures. I started to look up at my peers instead of looking over at them. I remember feeling really uptight about that. Every time people called me short, it was an insult instead of something I just could not change.

Screw you, Randy Newman.

Later, things got even worse than just being of a small and slight stature. At some point, I realized that I was always the last one at the dinner table every night. Let me explain. My family ate dinner together almost every night and we talked about our day and any other cool topics we could think of. We all ate and talked but, whether I was talking or not, everybody was done with their meal before me. I ate so slowly. Eventually, my folks had to release my brothers from the dinner table because everybody had things to do before bed. I would still be eating. I would focus on eating to try to beat everybody else to no avail. I could not point to anything specifically but I just could not manage to eat fast enough for the family to all finish together. Before you ask, it was also not because I am a picky eater. I ate pretty much everything happily.

Eating by myself. Alone. Independently.

It got worse. I noticed that I was getting winded a lot easier at recess. This is horrible news for kids because they are supposed to have nearly boundless energy until they pass out like their batteries suddenly lost charge. I was not the most athletic kid (and probably the worst Little Leaguer ever) but I did like to run around with my friends pretending to be a superhero. I have fond memories of pretending to be on the X-Men Blue Team while not using a basketball court as it was originally intended. However, I was breathing hard more and more. I was having difficulty catching my breath and even talking could be a chore sometimes. This is when doctors really started to get involved. They really do not appreciate when kids stop breathing correctly.

I usually wanted to be Cyclops. Less running.

For the longest time, they thought I had asthma. I had never really shown signs of it early in life but suddenly at age ten, they thought I had somehow developed it. That may be possible but (Spoiler Alert) that was not the case. When I went off to sleepaway summer camp (for dyslexics, another great story), I had to bring my inhaler with me. After breakfast and after dinner I had to get in line in front of a table with the other weaker members of the pack. When it was my turn, I had to breathe in chemicals that stung my throat and lungs from a little plastic bag. It is probably a hundred percent the reason I never tried marijuana. It felt like crap and it never helped but everybody, including me, felt more confident about my condition while doing it. Eventually, they realized it was not asthma. At that point, they thought it might be Cistic Fibrosis.

This was my anti-drug…. nevermind.

Yes, Cystic Fibrosis, that disease that the March of Dimes was always raising money for everywhere I looked at that age. Of course, my parents did not tell me this tidbit. Cystic Fibrosis sounds really scary and the medical description sounds even worse. The disease causes a build up of mucus in the lungs that blocks airways and makes it difficult or sometimes impossible to breathe. It also causes a mucus build up in the digestive system which makes that process hard to do as well. It seemed like a likely contender for what was wrong with me. I had problems in both those areas and everybody was probably pretty proud of themselves for coming up with that answer. Of course, nobody was happy about the diagnosis because it meant a lifetime of health complications and being stalked by death for at least the rest of my childhood. But was it the answer? We will find out next time in part two.

Support your local March of Dimes.