Killer Movies: Closed Circuit in context, plus some notes on the Severin Black Friday Sale (this weekend)

There's a certain kind of movie that, to my awareness, has not been systematically gathered together, classified or analyzed as a group: movies where either the movie or the theatre itself is the source of danger. I won't call these a subgenre, since they don't all belong to the same genre of film -- it's more of at trope that runs through a few types of films; but there are definite commonalities between them. Severin, on their coming Black Friday sale, is putting out an interesting variant on this theme, Giuliano Montaldo's 1978 film Closed Circuit, an experimental police procedural in which a gunfighter in a spaghetti western shoots into the audience. The director is an under-sung Italian filmmaker who has made three films I admire, but whose work has gotten little recognition here; he died a few months ago, on September 6th, 2023. I'll say a bit more about both Montaldo and the film presently, but first I want to mention a few important precursors, to try to place the film in a sort of context (though all of the following are horror movies). 

1. Precursors

Best I can figure it, the "killer movie" trope starts with 1958's The Blob: there is a scene in a movie theatre where the audience, no doubt a mirror image of the audiences watching the film, is menaced by the titular creature, which oozes through vents, absorbs the projectionist, and attacks the crowd, which attempts to flee. It's not the perfect realization of the idea, perhaps, insofar as the Blob does not actually attack from the screen, and the movie itself is not dangerous, but the theatre does become a site of horror. It's nice, too that the movie the audience is viewing is itself a horror film; and the parallel between the audience in the film to the audience watching it was no doubt not lost on viewers. 

William Castle, in the 1959 film The Tingler, oddly does not use a horror movie as the film within his film, but still ups the ante considerably; not only is the theatre a source of danger, as a parasitic monster crawls through the aisles of a theatre, threatening to suck the energy out of the patrons -- but Castle, at his gimmicky best, planted electrical charges (dubbed "the Percepto")  in the seats of some theatres to mimic the sensation of being attacked by the tingler. He also planted fainters and screamers among certain audiences, and used the cinema lights, the film (which goes dark), and the voiceovers of Vincent Price and other screamers to try to convey a sense that the dangers in the movie had bled out into the theatre itself. Castle bragged about his gimmick in the film's  promotion: "“For the first time in motion picture history, members of the audience, including you, will actually play a part in the picture. You will feel some of the physical reactions, the shocking sensations experienced by the actors on the screen.”

The film features what is described as the first LSD experience to be depicted in a movie (it is unclear from watching the scene if Castle, Price, or anyone else involved had actually taken acid, or had just heard about it; if people know, they are invited to comment). Tricks like this earned Castle a notoriety that served as the basis for Joe Dante's 1993 film Matinee, where Goodman plays a Castle-like producer bringing his own bag of tricks to a cinema, intent on blurring the line between the fictional and the real. But by the 1990s, the advent of home video, video games and the like made the idea of killer entertainments a commonplace; despite some interesting variants (Demons, Popcorn, The Ring, Cigarette Burns, Antrum,  and others), I'm only concerned with films made before 1978 -- the possible precursors to Montaldo's movie.   

The most relevant and impressive of these is 1968's Targets, though it's just as well that Peter Bogdanovich (or Roger Corman) did not attempt to blur lines in a similar way as Castle, come the climax of the film, which has attendees at a drive in movie being shot at by a sniper hidden behind the screen. Aware of the shooting rampage of Charles Whitman, which in part inspired the film, audiences would have been all-too-susceptible and likely not amused. Subject of a recent Criterion blu-ray, the film involves an aging horror movie star (Boris Karloff) who is making a public appearance at a screening of a horror film (actually Karloff's own previous film for AIP, The Terror) before he retires; he feels his brand of horror is too quaint and old-fashioned compared to the horrors of the modern world, which in turn are represented by the sniper, whose path to the drive-in is intercut with Karloff's own. The film has an unusual level of self-reflexivity, given that Bogdanovich, like the filmmaker he plays within the film, had been tasked with making a film for Karloff, who really was en route to retirement (or at least the end of his contract with AIP). Karloff's character's name (Byron Orlok), besides being a reference to the vampire in Nosferatu, is clearly a play on his own. And if there is no attempt to blur the lines between the audience's experience and reality, there are definitely blurred lines within the film, including a gag where a hungover Karloff catches himself in the mirror and starts with a fright, as if he'd just seen Frankenstein's monster...

The film itself does not actually kill anyone in the audience, but the sniper hides behind the screen, and people do get shot from the screen, so the idea of the killer movie is very much relevant. 

If there are other precursors to Closed Circuit, wherein a movie screen, theatre or drive in becomes a source of danger, I'm unaware of them (though Repo Man's Alex Cox, in his rather essential discussion of spaghetti westerns, 10,000 Ways to Die, views The Closed Circuit in light of another kind of film, Luis Buñuel's surrealist dark comedy The Exterminating Angel; one of the few critics to spend much time on Montaldo, Cox's essay is required reading for those interested in the film. Cox also contributes a commentary on the recent release of Montaldo's more straightforward, more overtly political Sacco and Vanzetti).

2. Giuliano Montaldo 

Giuliano Montaldo's filmography is divided between making commercial entertainments and more serious politically-themed projects. The first of his films that I've been able to see is Machine Gun McCain (distributed as Gli Intoccabilli -- The Untouchables -- in Italy), an entertainment that we gather was designed to fund his more historically-based films, like his next movie, like The Fifth Day of Peace (about the execution of German prisoners in a Canadian-run POW camp in the Second World War) and Sacco and Vanzetti (a true story about two Italian anarchists framed for murder and, again, executed). 

Machine Gun McCain lacks the seriousness of those topics, but it holds a very special place in my heart, since it stars John Cassavetes and a company of actors associated with him, including Peter Falk, Gena Rowlands, and Val Avery; it's like Montaldo is collaborating with "Team Cassavetes." Cassavetes himself was raising money for his own more serious projects (in his case, Husbands); like Montaldo, he frequently crossed the line between commercial entertainments and his own more personally-invested films, using his work in the one type of film to fuel his passion for the other. 

And that's where Machine Gun McCain becomes truly interesting, since it can be read as a metaphor for its own production. About a low-level gangster rallying his resources to rob a Mafia-run Vegas casino, it is shot through with a love of the little guy, the "independent," going up against organized crime. Trying to get money out  of Vegas can be read as a figure for trying to get money out of Hollywood (and Hollywood audiences); there's no question that, as unpleasant as McCain is (using slurs against homosexuals, raping -- and then falling in love with -- a woman, and generally being violent and full of himself), Cassavetes inhabits the role with gusto, finds something in McCain to identify with. He later, in his own work, returns to this theme, the lone man vs. the mob, with Cosmo in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and the Rowlands' title character in Gloria both set in opposition to Mafia thugs. I haven't seen his entire filmography as an actor prior to McCain, but it seems at least possible that this is the entry point of that thematic thread into his work (there's an interesting-looking essay about it on the Criterion website, if you're curious for more; I also would be remiss if I did not direct readers to Mike Patton and John Zorn's stirring interpretation of Morricone's theme song for the movie, "The Ballad of Hank McCain," off the expanded version of The Big Gundown). 

Another interesting Montaldo is a rather unpleasant anti-colonialist historical film about Italian soldiers in Africa, which may never actually find its audience: Time to Kill. It's been awhile since I've seen it, because -- oddly, given that it stars a young Nicolas Cage -- it has received no decent North American home video release, existing only in crappy-looking pan-and-scan presentations (though there is a decent English language version of it on Youtube, which actually looks better than the DVD that came out here). 

The film probably wants too much of its audience, in that you are asked to sympathize with an Italian soldier stationed in Africa who, in the course of the film, does some rather unforgivable things, tries to cover them up, then undergoes a crisis of conscience as to what he has done; he ends up, in a way, as a figure of all of Italy, or any colonizing power, trying to come to terms with guilt and shame and an awareness that they have wronged people, while remaining the "hero" of their own narrative, as we all generally do. "The good guy" in a movie -- and here I will write with significant spoilers -- is simply not usually someone who rapes and kills a woman (!) at the film's mid-point; there aren't many films that would expect you to maintain identification with a character after that, even if he mostly acts within the accepted limitations of colonial/ imperial privilege as he and his peers would have understood it: while his conscience may trouble him a little after his actions, it's not in fact guilt over what he has done that really gets the better of him, but a fear that he has contracted leprosy as a result (he discovers that the woman may have been a leper, wearing a white turban associated with the condition; it is the likelihood of punishment-by-disease that undermines him, not remorse per se). 

All of the above actually makes the film more, not less interesting, as it requires you to take a critical distance from the film's main character, even while "identifying" with him (an uncomfortable place to inhabit; you have to both invest yourself in Cage's character, and realize that you are investing in him as a flawed, mediocre man acting on behalf of a colonialist/ fascist occupation. Perhaps it's a given that Nic Cage fans will likely not enjoy this movie. For example, someone devoted to reviewing every Nic Cage film, on the website Everyniccage, describes it as "incredibly uninspired, and pretty boring," and wishes for "a more exaggerrated performance," complaining that Cage yells "only when a person would actually yell," which is kind of a curious criticism of a film (who but a Nic Cage fan could say such a thing?). Still, even that reviewer notes that the film, while criticising racism and imperialism, "uses the same tools that racism and imperialism use when creating art that portrays other cultures and races as ‘other’ and lesser." 

Which is actually on the money: the African characters are less believable, fully-developed beings in their own right than they are relegated to playing supporting roles in one white person's journey. Even films I love (like Clearcut) can be found guilty on this count; a truly anti-colonial gesture in cinema would be as interested in its African characters as its white ones, which Time to Kill is not. 

It's still more interesting than most other Nicolas Cage movies. 

This is all I can write about Montaldo at present -- I'll be heading over to Tubi soon to start on The Fifth Day of Peace. You can also see a spaghetti western called Day of Anger there, which is relevant to Closed Circuit, even if not directed by Montaldo, in that Closed Circuit is set in a theatre that is screening that film, I gather (along with another Giuliano Gemma film I have not heard of). 

3. Closed Circuit and Severin's Black Friday sale

I have not, as of this writing, seen Closed Circuit. I'm very interested, and will review it once I do see it, but since I am writing this apropos of a sale that is happening this weekend, which is marking the debut of Closed Circuit on the label, I would be remiss if I did not post about it BEFORE THE SALE STARTED. The film is reviewed in much more detail here, if you're interested in reading further. 

But a note about the sale: I participated in a Severin Black Friday sale a couple of years ago, netting for myself copies of Santa Sangre, Grizzly (complete with t-shirt), The Day of the Animals, The House on the Edge of the Park, Day of Wrath, and a couple of others; those were the ones that delighted me most (I passed on a few of the other items I got, like Black Candles and Night of the Demon - the bigfoot movie, not the Val Lewton one -- to others who I thought would appreciate them more). I might have grabbed an Amicus film off their site as well (I already had Blood for Dracula). While their recent standalone of Clearcut (obviously a film I have some attachment to) is not part of the sale, the All the Haunts Be Ours box set, which features it, is, for the first time, as are many, many other noteworthy titles, most of which are 50% off their usual price. Were I a wealthier man, with the leisure time required to watch all the movies I wanted, Cemetery Man, Spider Labyrinth, and The Church (which I believe began life as the third part in the Demons franchise) would all be of interest (and I still haven't picked up a copy of Perdita Durango!).

Note that the Severin Black Friday sale DOES take some patience to participate in, as video geeks with time and money to spare descend on the Severin website to scoop up heavily-discounted deluxe bundles, possibly overwhelming servers in the process; be patient if you are unable to log into the website (and keep trying). I also urge you to read their sale policies page ahead of time, to know what to expect and what is available; I believe the Severin site will be down until the feeding frenzy commences, and then be very active through the weekend. 

It's a great sale. I was very happy with the results a couple of years ago. If you're unfamiliar with Severin, they are particularly noted for their superb extras.  While I have no idea what the extras might be on the Montaldo blu, The Changeling, a locally shot film recently subject to an article in Montecristo, features a very fun "Psychotronic Tourist" extra that walks you through the locations. It should also be part of the sale, as I believe will be the case for Dennis Hopper's Vancouver-made film Out of the Blue, featuring the Pointed Sticks. Lots to be found, if you're a physical media type, once you make it onto their website. A full list of box sets and bundles can be found here. Good luck (and more to come on Closed Circuit)...