6 a.m.: Toby Dammit (1968)
ER: Six o'clock is a perfect time to show "Toby Dammit," which is only half an hour. "Toby Dammit" is the section that [director Federico] Fellini did—finishing off our Italians—for a film called Spirits Of The Dead, an anthology film from 1968. Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, and Fellini each adapted an Edgar Allen Poe short story. I wouldn't watch the Vadim and the Malle shorts. You can get a DVD and you can just choose which one you want to watch. You can watch all three, but they're not connected, so you can just go right for "Toby Dammit." It's an adaptation of a story I believe is called "Never Bet the Devil Your Head," and it's Terence Stamp in one of the single greatest performances I've ever seen. It's my favorite short film of all time, of anything I've ever seen. He's brilliant.
Terence Stamp plays this drugged-out actor who's flown over from London to Rome to star in a movie, and all he wants is a Ferrari. The only reason he did it was because they promised him a new Ferrari, so he's just completely out of his mind. He looks like he's been up for seven days on a coke/LSD/heroin binge. Drunk, drugged-up, and he just wants his Ferrari. But he's haunted by this little girl with a white ball who he thinks is trying to kill him, and he thinks she's the devil. And it's really, really creepy. But the way Fellini shot this—I mean, this movie's 40 years old—is so beautiful and brilliant and contemporary. You've never seen anything like it. I've always loved Fellini, but I was never a fanatic. I saw this and was like, "This is hands down the best horror short I've ever seen. This is brilliant." It's so visually striking. It looks like you're on some crazy drug trip, so watching that movie when you're at this level of tired is perfect.
6:30 a.m.: Evil Dead (1981)
ER: At 6:30, we're gonna want something to pick the energy up. At 6:30, I would go for Sam Raimi's original Evil Dead. Low-budget American horror made for $350,000—well, that's the rumor. Sam Raimi was like 21 when he made it. Bruce Campbell, shot on 16mm. There's such a wild spirit to this movie right from the opening frame. Anything can happen. It's got such incredible energy, and it's so low-budget—but you love it. You could tell they were doing anything, but there are sequences that are so effective. Little weird imagery like the sockets bleeding, and then touching the mirror and having the mirror be water. All this great stuff that was just pure, raw energy and creativity, but it has the energy of a Three Stooges episode. I love it.
AVC: Didn't Raimi say if he had to do it all over again, he might not have done the tree-rape sequence?
ER: Well, the tree-rape sequence got Raimi into trouble with the British censors, and he got brought up on charges of obscenity. I saw two days ago a Member Of Parliament… I mean, Hostel: Part II's been banned in New Zealand. It's been banned in the Middle East, and you knew it was gonna get banned in Singapore, but New Zealand, I was really surprised. And then in England, a Member Of Parliament brought it up, saying that under some new law, stills of Hostel: Part II… He hasn't seen the movie, but he heard it was misogynistic and pornographic, and that this new law would make it illegal to possess stills of the movie. In London, they're pushing and pushing for that.
8 a.m.: Audition (1999)
ER: Audition is a slow-burn horror movie that slowly builds and builds and things get creepier and creepier, but the last 10 minutes are the tensest 10 minutes of your life. And there are moments where the whole audience just jumps. It's so realistic and relentlessly brutal and horrifying, but it's brilliantly done. It's a film about perfection, and about people obsessed with perfection. And the photography's perfect, and the acting is perfect. And Audition was the film that made me want to make Hostel. I saw this and was like, "This is where horror's at. This is what I wanna do."
AVC: There's a lot of Miike I haven't seen, but I've never seen him be as precise as he is in that film.
ER: Yeah, and it's a film about this guy who wants this perfect life, and wanting perfection. The photography really reflects the subject matter of the film. And the way Miike uses color, and the production design, and this beautiful girl, and everything seems so perfect. His friend's trying to warn him: "No, no, something's wrong!" And he just won't listen. It's really a film about a sexist who doesn't realize he's that sexist, and it all comes back to bite him in the ass. It's kind of what I had with one of the characters in the first Hostel. They think that they're just having fun, and they don't realize that they're just taking advantage of people and using someone—and they get used. They become everything they're making fun of. Audition is a terrifying, brilliant film. And a beautiful movie, too.
10 a.m.: Torso (1973)
ER: There's so many different ways to go, but I would end with Torso, because I know a lot of people haven't seen it, and they should. Torso is a giallo film directed by Sergio Martino with Luc Merenda made in 1973, before The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I think there's a Blue Underground DVD, and NoShame has one that's coming out. It's such a fantastic Italian slasher film. Sergio Martino was the man. I mean, this guy made so many good movies that were underrated, and Torso, I think, is his masterpiece. It's so brilliantly photographed. The shots are incredible, but what's so great about Torso is the awesome lesbian subplot. It's a very great, almost erotic thriller. It opens right away with someone taking photographs of a lesbian threesome. The whole credit sequence is done over this. There's a great scene where the killer shows up at some weird hippie orgy in the woods, and there's some girl, and all these people are naked.
It's got lots of really great '70s things in it. But it's also one of the movies where the first 45 minutes are kind of incomprehensible. As Tarantino put it, "The movie almost dares you to keep watching it." I mean, what you're watching is fun, and you can definitely see the influence of Torso—the guy who played the doctor, Luc Merenda, I had him play a detective in Hostel: Part II. He came out of retirement for me. And there's scenes in piazzas, and it starts off in an Italian school. I mean, Torso was a huge influence on Hostel: Part II. But the last 15 minutes… Once they get to this house, the movie just takes off. The whole thing is about the house. So even if you don't know what's going on, or it just seems weird, or you're confused by who's who, don't worry about it. Keep watching until you get to the house. Once you're at the house, it's on. It's just unbelievable. The last 15 minutes of Torso are just some of the best filmmaking I've ever seen. It's such an underrated movie, and so few people have seen it.
AVC: That's how you want to send people out.
ER: You want people going out on the end of Torso. And you've seen here, there's a lot of Italian stuff, but we have some classic American, more modern '70s/'80s American, old Spanish stuff, old British, Dutch, and different varieties of Italian. You'll have Fulci, Argento, Deodato, Fellini, and Martino. And these are the kinds of movies that people should watch, to inspire them to look at every movie those directors have made. That's the idea. You could program it with all modern horror films that people have seen, but I love when you discover a pocket of cinema that you never knew existed. Like, "Toby Dammit" for me is a recent discovery. I didn't even know about it, and I consider myself fairly literate in horror, but suddenly it was like this great treasure had been discovered and I can now show and tell everybody about it. It's really exciting when you see Miike or The Vanishing—it suddenly gets you excited about that whole area of cinema, and it makes you want to go and track down every film that that director's done. And there are great ones out there.
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