“IF they want to kill me, let them do it.”

– Enrico Mattei

Until November 20.

[A] favourite horror movie overall*

”'M. Valdemar,' I said, 'are you asleep?' He made no answer, but I perceived a tremor about the lips, and was thus induced to repeat the question, again and again. At its third repetition, his whole frame was agitated by a very slight shivering; the eye-lids unclosed themselves so far as to display a white line of the{n} ball; the lips moved sluggishly, and from between them, in a barely audible whisper, issued the words:

'Yes; — asleep now. Do not wake me! — let me die so!'”

– Edgar Allan Poe, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1845) (via)

A man agrees on being hypnotised while in the state of dying. This particularly haunting and efficiently gory film – the first in the genre – is the result.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

The day of the court case. Numerous other dates are mentioned, all in flashbacks.

– The Paris Court of Appeals, meeting on October 15, 1959, pursuant to the charges against Dominique Marceau.

– With a girl like that, truth may be the best defense for once.

– You expect me to eat that?

– Americans live on ketchup and milk. I'm a whiz at geography.

[A favourite] exorcism film*

“Blood of Christ. Demon. A curse upon this man. A curse that he will never forget me. Blood of my body. Until the grave. A curse that he will never forget me.”

– Purificazione

When a rejected young woman puts a curse on her heart's desire, the locals see nothing less than witchcraft. It is decided that Purif must be possessed, and exorcised.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for October is horror-themed as opposed to date-based, and is all about favourites. Expect non-horror and films I believe to be relevant instead.

A translator for International Translation Day

“This mirror reflected a painting… with words. Chinese idiograms. 'The she-crane calls in the shadow. Her cheek answers.'”

– Alice Campos

Alice, the always fantastically brooding Florinda Bolkan, works as a translator when all of sudden she loses her job and finds herself on the small island of Garma. People tell her she has been there before, recently, but she knows this is not possible.

 

Some English-language posters try to sell Le orme as an action-ridden sci-fi giallo, but oh boy leave that perception behind and you're in for one unsettling treat! Le orme can be placed somewhere between Don't Look Now and that other Alice film, Chabrol's Alice ou la dernière fugue. Drifting and elegant, distant and claustrophobic.