Lewis Allen | The Uninvited / 1944

the scent of mimosa

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dodie Smith and Frank Partos (screenplay, based on a novel by Dorothy Macardle), Lewis Allen (director) The Uninvited / 1944

Oddly, one of the reasons that Lewis Allen’s “ghost story” The Uninvited is so successful arises from the fact that this work is so many things, and only incidentally a ghost tale. In fact, there are probably more comic lines in this work than what James Agee described as it “thirty-five first-class jolts” and “well-calculated texture of minor frissons.” One might almost be justified in equally describing the genre of this work as a romantic comedy, or a kind “love comedy.” The major “hero” of the film, Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland) spends much of the movie romancing a beautiful young woman, Stella Meredith (Gail Russell), who just happens to be the grand-daughter of man who owns the house on the Cornish cliffs, Windward, which Fitzgerald and his sister Pamela (Ruth Hussey) buy. One of the longest scenes of the film features a spontaneous voyage which takes the two out in a small boat, Fitzgerald bragging that he never gets seasick just before he is felled with painful stomach cramps and a soaring headache. Stella must steer the boat back to port. And by film’s end the couple, presumably, do plan to marry, while, very possibly, Pamela may have fallen for the local doctor, Dr. Scott (Alan Napier).

     Much of the time, moreover, the “haunted” mansion where the Fitzgeralds now reside is flooded in sunlight—it is, after all Spring 1937 (a time, in this film, where the Nazi threats of World War II seem not to exist)—and the Fitzgerald’s seem well-enough off to have dazzlingly decorated their mansion, eagerly greeting their old Irish servant, Lizzie Flynn (Barbara Everest). The writers, moreover, have provided the couple numerous witty and even silly lines, including Roderick’s suggestion that the strange crying they hear near sunrise may be “a loose ariel” catching the tears of a woman in the village, and Pamela’s plea that if she should lose her mind, do not take her to Mary Meredith sanatorium, run by the terrifying Miss Holloway (the formidable Cornelia Otis Skinner). But even that sinister place might be seen as a slightly satiric poke at psychological institutions, with the head doctor’s refusal to call her residents “patients,” and weekly sessions with her “visitors,” which she describes as “chats.

      Never has a so-called “horror film,” as critic Carlos Clarens has categorized it, contained more sunlight and innocent romantic love!

       So too does this film—as few other Hollywood-made horror films do—hint at other forms of love which in 1944 might not have survived a good reading at the Hays Office. The most notable of these “hints,” concerns the relationship between Dr. Holloway and the dead Mary Meredith, which is lesbian. Sitting under an over-sized portrait of Mary, painted by Mary’s husband, Miss Holloway recounts their relationship:

 

                        Mary was goodness, her skin was radiant, and that bright, bright

                        hair…. The nights we sat talking in front of the fireplace, planning

                        our whole lives. It wasn’t flirtations and dresses we talked about.

                        We were no silly giggling girls. We intended to conquer life.

 

    These women, early feminists, shared clearly an intense relationship which apparently was not lost upon The Uninvited audiences of the day. In an essay by Farran Smith Nehme, published in the informative pamphlet accompanying the new Criterion release, the author quotes from a letter written by Father Brendan Larsen of the Catholic Legion of Decency to Will Hays, head censor for the industry, complaining of special performances of the film: “In certain theatres large audiences of questionable type attended the film at unusual hours,” attracted to “certain erotic and esoteric elements in the film.” It’s nearly unimaginable that this film might have drawn late-night crowds like The Rocky Horror Picture Show of 1975, but apparently in certain places a lesbian-gay crowd gathered to hear and, perhaps, recite Miss Holloway’s charged speeches.

     The film, moreover, even hints at a much stranger relationship between the central characters, brother and sister. Why are the Fitzgeralds, both older than the usual marrying age, traveling together on vacation, and why do they so breezily determine to buy the mansion together and live there for the rest of their lives? Nothing further of made of this odd relationship, but it doesn’t erase the questions I just asked, even though they both find new companions in this Cornish town.

     Much of this film, furthermore, performs less as a “ghost story” than as a simple mystery, and much energy is devoted in an attempt to unweave its dense and complex plot. We barely hear of Mary Meredith’s night-time death by falling over a nearby cliff into the ocean than we are told of yet another woman in this house, Carmel, romantically described as a kind Spanish Gypsy, who evidentially was the lover of the painter Meredith. By film’s end we can understand why Meredith, given his wife’s preference to the company of the nurse Miss Holloway, might have taken up with another woman, but what is her relationship with Mary’s young daughter, Stella? And why is Stella’s grandfather so determined to keep his young granddaughter away from Windward House? In a town filled with gossip, nothing quite seems credible until, with Dr. Scott’s and one ghost’s help, we uncover further information and are able to piece these romantic and sometimes deadly relationships together. Indeed, director Allen expends almost as much energy on creating the aura of mystery around his work as he creates scenes of actual “horror.” Although a ghost does make an appearance by the end of the work, Allen wanted to keep the visual phenomena out of his film, and oddly enough, the visual manifestation was cut by the British censors, leaving the studio-required image only in the American version.

      This film also plays, in the way Hitchcock often does, with the psychology of his characters as well. In love with Stella, Fitzgerald is terrified that the young girl is about to have a nervous breakdown, to which the local doctor agrees, worried that it is beyond his abilities to cure her. Stella’s grandfather clearly has similar fears, calling on Miss Holloway to take his grandchild in to sanatorium. Miss Holloway, spouting stock psychological phrases, suggests, for her own evil reasons, that Stella is suffering from a “persecution complex,” and locks the girl away. Both of the Fitzgeralds, moreover, attempt to psychologize the ghostly events going on around them, bravely scoffing at any irrational explanations. When even the serving woman witnesses a manifestation of a ghost, Roderick simply explains that “Lizzie has conjured up a ghost.”

       Finally, this is also a ghost story, with not only one but two ghosts, replete with a séance, traveling wine glass, cryptic replies from the dead, and the possession of Stella, who speaks in a kind of hallucinated Spanish. Rooms suddenly grow cold, fresh flowers wither away, crying and moans are heard by all. One ghost, that of Mary Meredith—the beautiful, proud, and cold-blooded woman in life (clearly a figure not unlike Rebecca in Hitchcock’s film of a few years before)—continues her machinations against her daughter in the after-life, drawing her to the edge of the cliff again and again, in an attempt to kill her. The other ghost, overwhelming the rooms she enters with the scent of mimosa—an odiferous legume native to mostly tropical regions, certainly not at home on the nearby cliffs—comforts Stella. Carmel, who has been killed through negligence by Miss Holloway, is there to guard Stella, who, it turns out is her daughter, not Mary Meredith’s; and with that discovery, the ghost of Carmel is released from her earthly bonds. Roderick quickly does away with the other, more horrific ghost, simply through laughter, claiming that laughter shall now become the character of that great house, suggesting that this film, at heart, is truly a comedic work. There is certainly something wonderfully comedic in the film’s denouement that Stella can now be happy knowing she is a bastard child.

     This wonderful film is so packed with various convolutions that by the last frame we don’t really care how we should describe it. It is a work simply packed with sometimes contradictory forms, made all the more loveable by refusing to settle down into a single cinematic genre. One can only wish that Hollywood filmmaking today might take this little gem as a model, allowing even the “uninvited” subjects through its doors. For isn’t that the way of life?

 

Los Angeles, Halloween 2013

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (October 2013).

 

 

Laura Poitras | Citizenfour / 2014

the rulers and the ruled

by Douglas Messerli

 

Laura Poitras Citizenfour / 2014 [documentary]

 

Certainly it was appropriate, if not intentional, that my friend Pablo Capra and I saw Laura Poitras’ documentary, Citizenfour—a film about the dramatic behind the scenes moments of the earliest revelations of the US National Security Agency surveillance by Edward Snowden—on Halloween. For this film has to rank as one of the scariest scenarios ever depicted on film.

      Despite the statements of numerous reviewers such as Ty Burr, who suggested in the Boston Globe, that no matter what your point a view, this is a film everyone should see, few people seem to be rushing to the theaters to see it—at least from the evidence of the small audience with whom we shared the experience and my nearly 3,000 silent (about this issue) friends on Facebook. I am worried, just as the original reports published in major newspapers and magazines such as The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Der Spiegel, etc.—which I detailed in My Year 2013: Murderers and Angels—that Snowden’s reports about the vast network of gathering of our personal information did not severely trouble the majority of Americans or even the populations of other countries. Perhaps the fact that government spokesmen continue to insist that their kind of “meta-gathering” can only expose an individual in detail if the authorities specifically suspect terrorist acts, lulled most citizens into feeling they were somehow exempt from any meaningful surveillance.

      From the very beginning, Poitras’ movie attempts to make clear just how mistaken is that view. First of all, as Snowden and others have made clear, the so-called security committee who must give permission for any authority seeking in-depth information about individuals, has seldom, if ever, turned down such a request. More importantly, however, is the mistaken idea that this vast meta-information (that superficially details no names or specific conversations) is of no concern to the common, law-abiding individual. For what determines who is of “interest” is established through almost never-ending series of inter-linking rings. For a moment, before I even get to the movie, let me take a moment to attempt to demonstrate—and this using only a very small amount of real information already collected—using myself as example.

     Having already stored away all my e-mails and the names of those who have received those e-mails and the names of those who have sent me e-mails; having already swept up the vast troves of information I have written on my six blogs (each with hundreds of essays on film, theater, fiction, poetry, travel experiences and other events); having gotten hold of my current (as of today) 2,655 friends, most of whom I do not actually know, but with who am only too happy to share information about my publishing activities, and the reviews and commentaries I weekly create; knowing every credit card purchase I have made since around 2001; having stored away every trip, within the US and abroad, I’ve made in the past 13 years; and squirreled away every name, place, and word I have called up on my computers—and these, frankly, are just the tip of the iceberg in which my meta-data has frozen me—having taken in all this “meta-data,” one or two elements need only trigger the suspicion that something is wrong.

     Perhaps one or more of my international friends (the international ones even less protected from US and British investigation than even I am) suddenly shows up a list of suspected terrorists or himself is accidentally or purposely linked up to another who is suspected of terrorism, or whose brother has gone off to Syria to fight, etc.? Then I, too, would automatically link up to these others.

     Let us say, as I actually did in researching for his essay, I googled the names of William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe, or Edward Loomis—all former whistleblowers against the CIA, FBI, and NSA. And then, even more suspiciously to those overseeing the gigantic holdings of the NSA and the British GCHQ, I have been recorded as having looked up information on that traitor (described so by numerous public officials) Edward Snowden and, perhaps just as incriminatingly, the reporters who first leaked and continue to disseminate his “illegal” documents, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald! Simultaneously, Washington, D.C., the city in which I lived for 16 years, suddenly shows up in the inter-locking links, as does the former Soviet Union, which I visited, with the ROVA Saxophone Quartet in 1989. I may even have an FBI file, having attended events at both the White House and the Vice-President’s Mansion and having visited then Vice-President Mondale at his D.C. home during his run for the Presidency.  Or perhaps one of my numerous overseas customers to whom I sent books, has a friend, who has a friend….  And what about all those trips to Germany throughout the 1990s?

     Finally, there are my own numerous writings, posted so availably on my blog cites, including the piece I wrote in 2013 assailing the activities of the NSA, CIA, and FBI surveillance—not to mention all the volumes of My Year I have published and distributed.  Given the vast amount of coincidental information I just revealed—a pin in the real mountain of possibly incriminating information held in those meta-data files—it may be that even some of my readers might suddenly imagine me guilty of something. The fact that—although I have often questioned the decisions of my country’s leaders—I think of myself as a loyal American citizen who has voted in every election since I came of age, hardly matters! I am possibly guilty—given the vast amount of interconnections I have with other possibly guilty beings— simply through association—and so too, I am sorry to report, might be all those 2,655 Facebook friends! We all become more or less guilty in today’s interconnected world. If Hollywood can convince us that each of us has only “six degrees of separation” from a celebrity, how can we not—unless we live as hermits—be inextricably inter-connected with men and women who appear on paper to have possible links with terrorists. In the vast trove of “meta-data” in which those links sit, the daily likelihood that either an NSA computer operator or a misled individual elsewhere in the government employ might find too many links in what we think is the armor of our personal privacy is almost inevitable. On this day after Halloween, I can only assure you that, like Vincent Price intoned before many a horror film, you should be scared, very scared of the what you’re about to see—a future which, it is now apparent, has already arrived.

      Of course, many of you might well argue, that is just my—and a few other individuals’—paranoia. As Snowden hints, such paranoia in fact is the only protection against the loss of the liberties we still have. Once ensconced in his Hong Kong hotel room, Snowden quickly detaches a cord which might have permitted any from listening hear in through the telephone. When he changes passwords on his computer he covers himself with a towel, jokingly describing his “magic veil,” calling up Wagner(?)      

     Through the course of a few quickly sketched earlier scenes, Poitras begins her compelling narrative by trying to demonstrate just what I have—perhaps more clumsily—outlined above. The authorities know everything about all of us, and their way of making this information useful—indeed their only possible justification for having obtained all of this information about every individual in the United States and even more people abroad—is to connect the dots, to find links between individuals wherever they appear. If enough of them appear…well, that’s what gets you on a watch list, to which, at film’s end, Greenwald hints millions of Americans already have been appended.

     Most of the figures involved in this movie had already run afoul of U.S. government laws and agencies before the events in the film had even begun. William Binney was arrested at gunpoint in his own home after he had leaked information on the NSA and its adoption of the extraordinarily expensive meta-data Trailblazer gathering program that so appalled Snowden, and soon after Binney was driven out of the business he and his partners were attempting to develop for his sophisticated computer programs that more selectively intercepted sensitive data, without intruding upon individual rights. Laura Poitras, whose documentary works had been critical of American governmental positions, was so regularly stopped and searched at airports, often for hours at a time, that she moved to Berlin to escape U.S. government harassment. Glenn Greenwald moved to Brazil because the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act would not allow his Brazilian-born companion, David Miranda, to receive a visa allowing him to live in the United States.

     And before Snowden, Poitras makes clear, the NSA and other information-gathering agencies had already come under suspicion. People like Binney, who worked for the NSA as a major computer cryptologist under Bush, had already come forward warning not simply about the fact that such organizations were gathering so much information, but that through the Trailblazer (the system these organizations ultimately chose over Binney’s own ThinThread system) collections of personal information were missing real connections, lost in the dense forest of their meta-data, including linking-up the perpetrators of the events that occurred on September 11, 2001.

     I wish Poitras might have had more time to make these pre-Snowden issues clearer, but, as a good documentarian, she recognizes that the real drama of her work lays in her presentation of the startling Snowden revelations. And once the film hones in on the mysterious citizenfour, who seems to invade her computer without warning, the movie nearly burns across   the screen with its intensity. Citizenfour, the code name Snowden had chosen for himself, explains that he has not selected her, but that she, given her previous documentaries on Iraq and the Guantanamo prison, had selected herself.

     After what appears to be only a few introductory messages, with Citizenfour’s insistence that she get an encryption device and his suggestion that she may want to hook up with reporter Greenwald, we suddenly come face to face with the likeably handsome young man with whom we are now so acquainted. But this, we immediately realize, is the real thing, Snowden trapped in his Hong Kong hotel room on the very first day of June 3, 2013, with Poitras and Greenwald already poised to go, even if not really quite comprehending everything that had just been handed over to them.

       They ask a few introductory questions both about Snowden and about the meaning of the near-encyclopedic evidence he has handed over. But what is perhaps more interesting, is the questions they don’t ask (or asked, perhaps, off camera). Having already done so much research on these issues, maybe they were simply not as startled as the audience inevitably is, suddenly desperate to try to comprehend just how Snowden has been able to retrieve all this information, even given his high-priority position which later government authorities attempted to deflate and play-down. How did Snowden, who had obviously passed a wide range of investigatory tests to gain his level of clearance, hidden his growing discontent in his job? Although we now know that he claims to have expressed his rising disgust of what he thought were illegal actions by the U.S. government, the writers and director of this film, do not seem to wonder how such a grand disillusionment by a man whose entire family were committed to government service came about? How could such an apparent believer, an almost nerd-like government servant, suddenly grow so brave as to take upon himself one of the most burdensome revelations of all time? Clearly it can only have boiled up within him over long, long hours of watching, linking, thinking, connecting the dots…. If nothing else, Snowden demonstrates himself in the few interviews of this film as an enormously intelligent, self-aware individual willing to lose his life or, at the least, most of her personal freedoms, if he can help to sustain his citizen friends’ personal liberties. As citizen four, he clearly identifies himself as one of us.

      There are moments in which either he or Poitras, in her cinematic presentation of him, suggest a bit of preening—and, self-admittedly, he is proud to having to play the role he has chosen—demonstrating a tendency to cast him a bit like a romantically-driven James Dean. But the minute we might suspect any self-jockeying, he makes it clear that he is fearful that when he is discovered to be the leaker his personal self may overwhelm the information he is trying to convey, a danger he is determined to alleviate. Yet he is torn, since he also hopes to bear the burden of his “crime” alone and, in admitting his actions, encourage others to behave similarly.

      After seeing Snowden, in the flesh, so to speak, pondering the effects of all he wrought, I’m willing to agree with what Godfrey Cheshire has written in a review on Roger Ebert’s old blog:

 

                             No doubt the movie will inspire various reactions. For myself,

                             I take the guy at face value. He seems eminently sane and

                             decent, a good guy, smart, articulate, good-humored and,

                             given the circumstances he’s brought upon himself, incredibly

                             courageous.

 

I might go even further in describing this man, who at such an early age, is willingly ready to give up his own life for the cause of personal liberty, as a new kind of hero.

      Greenwald, himself, might make the subject of a great movie, as the multi-lingual writer so quickly assimilates the mountains of information, and, almost before they have even begun talking, has already written six articles ready to be published by The Guardian. Had he and Poitras not been willing to take on the task that Snowden seems to have perceived they were capable of, Snowden, like Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, would be holed away in some prison cell without us even knowing it. And thank god for the media editors who saw the importance of what they were writing!

      So compelling is Snowden’s and Greenwald’s personalities that when the film later focuses on important larger events, taking the implications of what they revealed out of their capable hands and putting it into the minds and voices of the international community where they had hoped the dialogue would continue, we feel slightly cheated, perhaps even afraid that the temporary hoopla may suddenly die down again (as I feel it already has) without anything having been truly accomplished. Binney arrives in Germany to testify before the German Parliament, but upon the discovery (not entirely explained) of a double-spy within the German government, the testimonies are suddenly cancelled.

     In Brussels, Greenwald and others speak quite brilliantly of the issues, one spokesman proclaiming that, having abandoned our personal liberties, we now live in a world where former democracies, whose leaders once perceived themselves as officials elected by their constituents, now see themselves as the rulers over those they rule; another speaker parsed the important difference between a loss of privacy and the loss of freedom, arguing that we have now confused the freedoms we have lost with the issue of privacy, the larger issue being of far more importance .

     Lawyers preparing their defense of Snowden discuss the absurdity of the American government’s decision to charge him under the 1917 Espionage Act, wherein he can be tried for each document he passed on with a punishment of each instance of 10 years imprisonment; Snowden, accordingly, might then be tried on hundreds of such charges. And any fair-minded being can only appreciate those lawyers’ honest assessment that the government’s determination to go after Snowden has 95% to do with politics and only 5% to do with law.

     Yes we miss the intensity, surety, and even faith of Snowden’s wide-open American face, and the studied pondering determination of Greenwald’s frowns.

      Obama’s suggestions that Snowden should have spoken about his reservations to his superiors, are so preposterously absurd that it almost hurts anyone, like me, who voted for him, to look the man in the face. And, ultimately, I can only ask what happened to Obama, who before the election was so determined to oppose the kind of massive surveillance Bush had set in place, challenging the notion that after 9/11 Americans inevitably had to give up so many important liberties, and yet, who after the election, presumably after being briefed by military, CIA, NSA, and FBI representatives, so inexplicably changed his position, suddenly attacking honest men who reveal the exploits of those ever-growing organizations and going after whistleblowers even more avidly than Bush?

     No matter how much the American President gives lip service to Snowden’s revelations creating a healthy dialogue about those issues, we have to recognize that, like some dictator, refusing to abandon his information-gathering forces, he remains determined to punish Snowden and anyone else who steps even slightly out of line. Did Obama learn something so terrible in those early conversations between his information-gathering community representatives that put him on a despot’s path? How can other Democrats like Diane Feinstein continue to support him so relentlessly? What do these individuals know that we cannot. Or is it just fear. Fear, if that’s what it is, can only lead us to a hate so strong that we are willing to give up our liberties. Everyman becomes a murderer once again.

     After Greenwald’s Snowden reports, for example, as Greenwald’s companion Miranda had flown to Germany in order to bring Greenwald a file from Poitras, he was stopped in Heathrow Airport by the London Metropolitan Police and held for nine hours, while his laptop and other items were seized. Greenwald succinctly described the act as being "clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ.” Snowden remains trapped in Moscow, joined, fortunately, by his female companion with whom he had been living before he chose to reveal his files.

       Fortunately, Poitras’ important document holds out some hope. As the final, nearly unspoken, conversation makes clear, some very important individual has joined the struggle, just as Snowden predicted, to become another head in the hydra battling those among us who have long given up on protecting our personal freedoms.

        I wait for that day of revelation! But still I remain very frightened. Will they (whatever they who claim, as representatives of the Kafka-like rulers over those they insist they rule) come to my door to name me as a danger to the world in which I live and love?

 

Los Angeles, November 1, 2014

Reprinted from Nth Position [England] (November 2014)

Whammy Alcazaren | Bold Eagle / 2022

no one there

by Douglas Messerli

 

Whammy Alcazaren (screenwriter and director) Bold Eagle / 2022 [16 minutes]

 

Bold (who uses the internet name luckymaybe1923) is highly depressed, trapped in his own apartment, fearing or disinterested in going out or answering the continued knocks and cries at the door. Instead, he dreams of Hawaii, where he imagines he might be happy, and spends his days in his Navotas City apartment crammed with family memories, posters of all kinds, stamp albums, and an ever-patient cat, while spending his time mostly while on hallucinogenic drugs and seeking love from strange men on the internet as they masturbate and fuck their way to “happiness.”

   At moments, Bold Eagle is truly beautiful and imaginative—although its tripped-out images are somewhat predictable and I could certainly do without the smiley emblems and the pussy heads—and filled with pornographic sexual acts of all sorts, on film and in photographs.       

     Yet this is also one of the most depressing films I have ever seen, with, it appears, no way out for Bold who can only vary his world by dressing up in different costumes and playing out the behavior of various animals and other figures. He cannot find his way back, evidently into life, and despite all the cheer-up songs sung in English by Hawaiian choir boys, he still finds it difficult to get out of bed or even rise from his usual position on the floor.

     He wishes he were the cat. According to the Internet, he seems to have won a free trip to Hawaii. Perhaps he should answer the knocks at the door, the calls for him to come out. But Bold, is not an Eagle and cannot leave his protective nest.

     This Philippines short movie by Whammy Alcazaren is definitely not for everyone.

 

Los Angeles, August 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2024).

George Kuchar | Ascension of the Demonoids / 1985

stripped of all pretenses

by Douglas Messerli

 

George Kuchar (screenwriter and director) Ascension of the Demonoids / 1985

 

With his first and only grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, George Kuchar produced a bit longer work then usual, with a few more sophisticated tricks, but basically not so very different from his usual zany fare produced out of his bedroom and on the streets.

    The subject here is a common one for both him and his brother Mike, unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Except this time, our central figure actually does see and visit a flying saucer controlled by women, which so changes him that no one wants to believe him, including himself, despite his photographic evidence.

     It begins with three naked men huddled in a room, “stripped of our pretenses,” so declares the narrator, wondering how it all began. One of the members (David Hallinger) is massaging the central figure, Rock Ross, who after spotting a flying saucer, runs back to get his camera to take pictures as an alien woman leads him into the golden covered innards of the saucer. The ship's commander speaks a hippie-like gobbledygook about semi-philosophical ideas: “Time for us is all immediate. As part of creation, I experience the creation in small things, even a microbe.”

   In this case, however, the experience changes him, turning Ross into a sexual pervert who attacks women and sometimes even men. Many a time with a woman in the kitchen another handsome male with only a small towel wrapped around his waist enters and distracts him in his sexual business.

      All three, Ross and his two friends naked in the bedroom, evidently belong to the local UFO club, but at the weekly meeting one member merely recounts his recipes for how to make the perfect pot roast, while the chairman complains that he’s burned out and wants to get away to Hawaii. Ross’s experiences which are now necessarily hooked up as well with Big Foot, never get discussed.

       Much of the rest of the movie plays out his change in personality, where the formerly meek and shy man begins attacking women and fighting the men who might protect them.

       In between Kuchar waves undulating bands of color over supposed sex scenes while the camera follows Ross on his adventures.

       Eventually he is cured, and the head of the UFO club actually does get away to Hawaii to where the last fourth of Kuchar’s film follows him for far too long, trailing off into a kind of Hawaiian love story.

       As one Letterboxd commentator (Zara), new to the Kuchar world describes it, quite beautifully: “[It] almost feels likes something a teenager would make in the most positive way, a wild ride, playfully immature. …The real absurdity lies in the absolute mundanity of these paranoid UFO enthusiasts and their sex lives opposed to their off-kilter escapades…but it’s also kinda uninteresting?”

       And, of course, this like so many of his other films, Demonoids makes grand fun of all those hundreds of UFO movies, including the grandest puff-dragon of them all, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

 

Los Angeles, August 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 6, 2024).