The Battleship Potempkin

Usually not considered to be a horror film it is one of my favorite movies and is undeniably one of the best films ever produced. Recently a highly successful smash hit has also been produced which somehow mirrors the movie set by set in a highly disturbing fashion which got to be unknown to the director and actors and was not noticed by anyone but me and now most people who know me know I will show them how these films connect with each other like butter between two sides on a sandwich.
The Conjuring is the name of the other film - the Battleship Potempkin´s sister as I call it.
The Conjuring mirrors the Battleship Potempkin in such a banal and harrowing way that ´to be able to understand the Conjuring you must see the Battleship Potempkin´. To many people both films will be equally pointless. And that is precisely the ultimate horror of both movies - the pointlessness of being stalked by inhuman evil and inhuman hatred - the Tsarist police´s inhuman hatred towards ´Comrades´in the Battleship Potempkin vs. the demon´s inhuman hatred towards the mother in the Conjuring.
Believe me folks the producers had no intention to use the Battleship Potempkin as an inspiration. But because of the enormous power the Battleship Potempkin has got over the subconscious of humanity it is no wonder that it seems to be able to choose certain films and then act on them before they have become finalized with the Shining being a famous example. Real horror films are horror films, plain and simple. This is the simple truth about how these two films became such instant and raw pieces of masterworks of cinema. It is so because the best horror films are the ones which make you feel real bad after having watched them. They make you feel angry and helpless. Angry to know that something like this can happen to people. Helpless to know that even if it has not happened to you it can happen to anybody it happens to and you are beyond their cry of help.

Storyline: who is not familiar with the storyline of the Battleship Potempkin? The Battleship Potempkin is about the uprising against the Tsarist police and against Tsarist authorities who have been treating Ukrainean and Russian peasants as inferior beings. A crew belonging to the Battleship Potempkin decides to attack the real enemies who turn out to be those giving orders. Caught in the middle of this is a nurse who loses her child in the midst of a clash between police and citizens. Needless to say the clash and it´s associated madness continue. 

Negative Image - short film

This horror short is one of my favorite shorts and one of the best ones I have seen in a long while. The short deals with the concept of the negative image in photography. It portrays light against dark in a very vivid sense which few short films have managed to do to produce an instant success. If you are into haunted house movies you are definitely going to love this gem. It is shot quite well and builds up intensely until what´s left is your question on the meaning of the beginning and the ending which is known only to you.
This film is also good for those wishing to learn something about photography on youtube.

Storyline: a photographer who specializes in abandoned house imagery decides to visit a forbidden zone surrounding a house believed to be haunted - an abandoned mental hospital. What he finds comes after him and begins to haunt him. Eventually he will learn why he heard a voice in his head telling him to stay away the hard way. 

Livide is splendid!!

Livide is a splendid and very well crafted French horror film. I didn´t expect to see such a lovely and deliciously dark take on Vampire in French film making. For a long time now until Livide people had thought that the Vampire and Werewolf movies are dead. Especially after Ginger Snaps. With the arrival of the Wolfman after Ginger Snaps that all changed and now we have got Livide. Of course notable vampire films have been made since then but since I don´t watch a lot of vampire movies it is pretty understandable that I haven´t watched the recently produced Byzantium. I don´t mean to spoil the storyline of Livide to people who have not seen it yet. But I can tell them that my experiences of watching Livide got me convinced that it has got all the elements a good horror film has got to have to succeed.
In the case of the vampire movie the ideal vampire movie is the one which has got vampires which remind people of the importance of their immortality - not the importance of being immortal after being bitten.  In any terribly done vampire film the viewer is made feel that being a vampire is somehow better than not being one. Films such as Livid expose this fallacy pretty well. Some have said you´ve gotta be dead to be one while others have said differently. The Twilight series failed because they emphasized the silly notion that the vampire life is somehow much better than any other life and therefore should be looked forward to with a sense of hope. Any good vampire film director knows that his film sold because it played on the concept of people becoming vampires against their will. Because so very often vampirism is not a choice at all. It is something people eventually encounter at any moment in their lives. And so the idea of an immortal vampire is very contrary. All vampires are mortal because they are all going to die. Livide shows this to you in ways most French movies have avoided to do and so becomes a slowly built success. This is because good vampire films are extremely politically incorrect like Livide. Because in Livide nobody is in control of their condition which makes the ending very unpredictable and the film therefore better.
Bravo!