The Incubus DVD review: Corpse pubes, John Cassavetes, and Bruce Dickinson, all in one movie!

In no particular order, eight decent reasons to see The Incubus, a neglected horror film of yore, recently re-released on DVD as part of Katarina's Nightmare Theatre:

1. John Cassavetes not only stars in the film, bringing smouldering charisma to many scenes, but - as director John Hough told the Vancity Theatre's Tom Charity, when interviewed for Charity's book, John Cassavetes: Lifeworks, Cassavetes extensively rewrote the screenplay, with the end result being 80% his (see page 236 of the book; Hough also directed Cassavetes in the action film Brass Target, also discussed therein). Since Cassavetes didn't write much in the way of genre stuff, and certainly not horror, this provides a rare opportunity to see him working outside his area of comfort and expertise. I won't lie and say that he succeeds entirely; to work, genre films generally have to be well-oiled, structurally sound, and tightly controlled - think Hitchcock - while Cassavetes tends to the passionate, intuitive, poetic, and somewhat anarchic, unconcerned with tying off all loose ends. All the same, no true Cassavetes fan can afford to miss this movie; to some extent, without denying John Hough ultimate authorship, if any film can be described thus, The Incubus is John Cassavetes' horror film.

2. The Incubus engages some very rich, strange psychology, often themed around sex, and often seeming to engage with the psycho-sexuality of horror cinema (or Cassavetes' ideas about the same; you wonder if he'd been reading Mulvey or something - her key article had been written at that point). The lustful male gaze is self-consciously fronted throughout, almost to the extent you might find in De Palma (whom Cassavetes had worked with a few years prior). The film begins and ends on zooms out of and into an eye, and there are several POV shots of women, as viewed both by the demonic "incubus" of the title, and by Cassavetes' character, whose penetrative gaze is remarked upon in the film; he REALLY stares at one woman, until she becomes uncomfortable. Since he also apparently has an incestuous attraction to his daughter (played by Erin Flannery, AKA Erin Noble, more on whom below) - he is seen peeping at her getting out of the shower - questions of sexual taboo and repression enter into the film, though taboo desires tend (as in life) to get projected onto the female, who is punished for the male's lust: there are repeated flashbacks/ dreams involving robed male monks torturing a naked woman (a witch) in some sort of medieval chamber. I'm not sure what any of that amounts to - it sets you up to expect one sort of ending, involving the ownership of the demonic gaze (you're sort of cued to think the "real" demon is Cassavetes) but (mild spoiler?) instead, in its last minutes, the film does something quite different, which, rather than "resolving" all wrongs in a neat, pat stroke, perpetuates them on another level, and leaves you uncomfortable, because you're not sure what's just happened (narratively), or what to make of it (thematically). It's like Cassavetes has anticipated viewer expectations and deliberately foiled them - like HE is thinking on the same sort of meta-level I'm attempting here, and refusing to make it easy for anyone. If the resulting ending is a bit of a head-scratcher - which must have something to do with the film's mostly negative reviews - I would still much rather see a film that has a genuine head-scratcher for an ending than a film that doesn't inspire so much as a minute's thought, where everything is strictly by-the-book.

3. Along the way, meanwhile, there's all sorts of weird shit that will appeal to horror fans. A demonic rapist, whose appearances connect to someone's dreams, and who has wriggling red sperm, which he leaves behind in bucketfuls? That's wacky stuff for a horror movie made in 1982, and the film itself breaks a few taboos in telling this tale (in particular, if there is a non-documentary film that contains more uses of the word "sperm" than this movie, I have never seen it; every time someone in the film says it, it's like some weird button is being pushed, like you're simply not supposed to talk about sperm in movies. There's also repeated mention of a ruptured uterus and, if I'm recalling correctly, the phrase "dry intercourse," which has an immediately unsettling resonance, especially if you imagine yourself experiencing it, male or female). There's more pubic hair seen in the film than in most mainstream movies of its day, too, and in one case, the pubes are those of a corpse (!). The rapes are also rather nasty - there's a lot of female trauma in this film, which makes it a rather uncomfortable watch. But again, horror fans WANT things that make them uncomfortable; that's how horror works - it finds the raw nerves, the sore spots, the chinks in the armor, the tender flesh, by poking you hard and seeing where you flinch. I last saw this film on VHS in the 1980's, and then only once, but there are moments I could remember, quite vividly... that says something...

4. The film, while set in New England, has an old-world Gothic aesthetic; it is visually very much of a piece with Hough's other noted horror film, The Legend of Hell House. If you like creepy old books containing occult lore, and if your idea of effective interior design includes cobwebs and skulls as design elements, you will enjoy much about the look of this film. Of course, these date the film, too - the "Gothic" look is seldom used these days without irony; but it's well-done, here, seeming believable and sincere and old-school. (The contrast between the film's clinical spaces and language and its dungeon-like sets is probably significant, too, but I'd have to see the film again to speculate as to how).

5. Cult film fans will enjoy watching Erin Flannery/ Noble at work, as Cassavetes' character's daughter. She played the "good" female student, acting opposite a young Michael J. Fox, in that terrific, punkified riff on The Blackboard Jungle, Class of 1984. (See to the left - I could find no images of Flannery from The Incubus online). Contra the male-chauvinist-piggish type over at DVD Verdict who describes her as having a "face that launched a thousand lunches," I think Flannery (and, judging from her photo on IMDB, her adult incarnation, Erin Noble) is quite strikingly beautiful, all the moreso for being unconventional in her looks. She also acted in the Canadian-made CIA thriller The Amateur, starring John Savage, and in a strange, voyeurism-themed Harvey Keitel film from 1986, called Blindside, but I haven't seen either in decades.

6. The Incubus will also be of note (here's a surprise) to Iron Maiden fans, as Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson, in his pre-Maiden band Samson, appears, and actually sings a song! (In the context of a movie-within-a-movie clip from Julien Temple's film Samson: Biceps of Steel - image to the right. He's credited as "Bruce Bruce," a name I bet he is glad he retired).

7. And speaking of music, Stanley Myers provides an effective, creepy score. Myers came up working on Dr. Who in the 1960's, and wrote music for several noted films, including Hough's earlier horror film, done for Disney, The Watcher in the Woods, as well as The Deer Hunter, some Pete Walker horror films (Schizo, Frightmare, House of Whipcord) and several Nic Roegs (Eureka, Castaway, Insignificance, Track 29, The Witches, Cold Heaven, even Roeg's disappointing, done-for-TV, by-the-book Heart of Darkness adaptation).

8. Finally: John Hough is a gifted, inventive filmmaker! While I've seen only a few of his movies - The Legend of Hell House, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, and this film - I've admired all of them, in different ways. He films several scenes in The Incubus from unusual, inspired places: from the ceiling, from the bottom of a moving wheelchair, even peeping over the top of a bathroom stall. He works hard to make the odd storyline believable, by having peripheral characters tell Cassavetes that his theory that someone is dreaming the rapes into reality is "bullshit." He handles POV shots of stalking and rape without ever seeming (contra De Palma) lascivious or leering or adolescent. And he genuinely invests the film with mood and tension, right up to its what-the-hell-was-THAT twist ending.  "It was a big disappointment to us when the film wasn't a success, because while we were making it we thought we were doing something really interesting and exciting," he says in John Cassavetes: Lifeworks (236). From the point of view of a contemporary fan of both horror cinema and John Cassavetes, I can see why they thought that; The Incubus, while maybe not perfect, is a pretty cool little movie, well worthy of reassessment. If you watch it, let me know what you make of the ending!