Recently in the basement, I’ve been watching movies that show up on people’s most shocking/disturbing lists lately, hoping to find something challenging. 

Here, alas, is another one that just doesn’t cut it.  Gerald Kargl’s Angst  (1983) is not as interesting as he seems to fancy it is.  It would be better if Kargl had been brave enough to jettison the annoying voiceover narration and just let the visual carry the portrait (a la, say, Polanski’s Repulsion).  The narration is dull and intrusive, and the movie quickly becomes overly talky although it has virtually no dialogue.  If you can’t trust your audience to “get it,” then why make the movie?   The silly yapping does little to illuminate the character and fails to give us any “deep” appreciation of his motives. 
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Even worse, the pacing sucks.  For such a short movie (86 minutes) it has a lot of what feels like filler, and I was left feeling this was a thirty-minute short dressed  in a ridiculous full-movie costume.  Crane shots like bad music videos.  Lots of extended sequences of running and walking.   Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay  too much dragging around of already dead bodies, step by fucking annoying, drawn-out, tiresome step.  In the end, it is saddled with a “shocking climax” that does not shock and is hardly climactic.  There are some legitimately unnerving moments, and  Erwin Leder’s performance is strong, but these are not nearly enough to carry the whole.   

Dude's name is Easton Hawk.  He's from Illinois and if you don't know his work, you should.  Came across his stuff at a convention last year.  Check him out on Instagram.  

Dynamite band from Boston.  Never as big as they deserved to be . . .  

Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2 has a lot of issues: poor script, shitty pace, wooden acting, dull plotting.   Then again, is it really all that?   Or is it just casting?  The first installment of the series was so good that it’s hard for me to be objective about what’s wrong here.  The plain truth is that no one on screen here is a fraction as  compelling as Michael Rooker’s demented Henry, or Tracy Arnold’s damaged Becky, or Tom Towles’s disturbed Otis.   It’s hard for me to gauge whether part two is really that bad or if it’s just not that good.  Maybe it’s my disappointment talking, right?  One thing’s for sure—despite this movie’s unflinching willingness to stare into the flat, dead eyes of senseless violence, it doesn’t hold a candle to the original.   It lacks the sense of a world drenched in ancient poverty and penetrated by the stench of hopelessness that made the first movie so believable and painful.  Somehow, amid all the grit and grunge, the first movie made you care about what happened to Becky, and maybe even to Otis and Henry, too.  Quite an accomplishment when you think about it—and something part two doesn’t come close to pulling off.  

James Ellroy  The Hilliker Curse 
 
Ellroy is a good crime novelist.  I especially liked the LA Quartet back in the day.   The bio My Dark Places was ok, too.  But another book about himself?  Most of what is good here was already discussed in the earlier book.  Really, someone needs to tell him that his own life is not all that interesting.  Shaddup already and go write a novel.   

the ​last house on the left (1972)
the Texas chain saw massacre (1974)
i spit on your grave (1978)
cannibal holocaust (1980)
henry: portrait of a serial killer (1986)