DEMON POND, GUMMO, Val Lewton, PANDORA'S BOX: Criterion in October 2024
Folk horror from Japan! Angelic and devilish souls from rural America (US)! Val Lewton horror from Hollywood! Melodrama from Germany!
In October 2024, Criterion plans to release a rich collection of horror-month appropriate titles from across the world. To be specific, in Demon Pond, "Japanese New Wave renegade Masahiro Shinoda transforms a classic Kabuki tale with his own extravagant visual style in this dimension-shattering folk-horror fantasia," according to the official description
To continue: "When a lone traveler (Tsutomu Yamazaki) stumbles upon a remote, drought-stricken village, he finds himself engulfed in a whirlpool of myth, mystery, and magic: in a nearby pond reside spirits who hold the fate of the town's inhabitants--including lovers Akira (Go Kato) and Yuri (Kabuki legend Tamasaburo Bando, who also plays the ethereal princess reigning over the water)--in their hands.
"Set to the swirling strains of electronic-music pioneer Isao Tomita's synth score, Demon Pond blends theatrical artifice with cinematic surrealism for an aquatic-apocalyptic fable of human love and folly caught in the current of nature's wrath." '
If scary bodies of water are not your thing, how about Gummo, described thusly:
"Harmony Korine's debut feature is an audacious, lyrical evocation of America's rural underbelly, and an elegy in the southern-gothic tradition of William Faulkner and William Eggleston.
"Shot in Korine's native Nashville--standing in for the tornado-ravaged Xenia, Ohio--the rough-hewn film follows two young friends, Tummler and Solomon, as they ride around town, huffing glue and hunting stray cats, their every local encounter charged with vaudevillian anarchy as well as deep pathos.
"At once transgressive and empathetic, disturbing and undeniably beautiful, Gummo is a one-of-a-kind portrait of angelic and devilish souls caught in a cultural void, circumscribed by poverty and the depleted, alienated spiritual life of late-twentieth-century America."
If your tastes lean toward the classic, then two two-some from Val Lewton should be very appealing:
"Terror lives in the shadows in a pair of mesmerizingly moody horror milestones conjured from the imagination of Val Lewton, the visionary producer-auteur who turned our fears of the unseen and the unknown into haunting excursions into existential dread.
"As head of RKO's B-horror-movie unit during the 1940s, Lewton, working with directors such as Jacques Tourneur and Mark Robson, brought a new sophistication to the genre by wringing chills not from conventional movie monsters but from brooding atmosphere, suggestion, and psychosexual unease. Suffused with ritual, mysticism, and the occult, the poetically hypnotic I Walked with a Zombie and the shockingly subversive The Seventh Victim are still-tantalizing dreams of death that dare to embrace the darkness."
If you prefer something from the heart of Europe, why not consider Pandora's Box?
"One of the masters of early German cinema, G. W. Pabst seemed to have an innate talent for discovering actresses. And perhaps none of his female stars shone brighter than Kansas native and onetime Ziegfeld girl Louise Brooks, whose legendary persona was defined by Pabst's lurid, controversial melodrama Pandora's Box.
"Sensationally modern, the film follows the downward spiral of the fiery, brash, yet innocent showgirl Lulu, whose sexual vivacity has a devastating effect on everyone around her. Daring and stylish, Pandora's Box is one of silent cinema's great masterworks and a testament to Brooks's dazzling individuality."
To read about the special features included for each release and all the technical details, please visit the official Criterion Collection site, where you can also place your advance orders and/or deplete your bank account, which may be a terrifying horror picture for next year.
