31 Days of Halloween: X

2022, Ti West (In the Valley of Violence) -- download

Waitasec, we have been doing 31 Days of Halloween as long as we have been doing this blog? I wonder if starting a movie watching/writing blog influenced us to celebrate the season, really our favourite eventful season, by watching and writing about said movies. We also seemed to have started the tradition with the watching of Ti West flicks. 

For a while, after his western, he shifted into TV but returns with yet another harkening-back-to-the-70s movie not just reminiscing about the era, but actually taking place in it. X is an easy setup; a film crew piles into a van, on their way to rural Texas, to the spot of land they rented to shoot a porn movie. But not just any porn, as they have in mind to be a bit more artsy, a bit more accessible, paving the way for the popularity of adult VHS tapes. And its a good idea, considering all the video stores I worked at ended up with a seedy space behind the curtain that adolescent Toasty always wondered about. They rent said spot of land from the classic Creepy Old Man who has a decaying house on a wide, open farm that doesn't seem to actually grow anything. Creepy Old Man has a creepier old wife who has an instant fascination with all these free living young people staying in her "guest house".

Horror movies have always had a spot of the titillation in them, and I imagine the treatment for this movie commented on not just sporting some sex starved teenagers and showing boobies, but dispensing with the charade, and just being fully about the nudity and exploitative sex. And while it does, and frankly has to, focus on the eroticism of what they are doing, its not... overboard? In fact, its a bit dialed back? They are making a porn, so there are sample scenes, nudity from both sides of the fence, perky tits and swinging dicks, fake moaning and professed real moaning, but the real focus is on the Creepy Old Man, Howard (Stephen Ure, Deathgasm), and his Creepier Old Wife, Pearl.

Body horror, drawn from the debatable ick factor of old people's bodies, is also common in horror. One of the famous scenes in The Shining shifts from caretaker Jack Torrance making out with a sexy ghost, to being horrified when he sees that she is a disgusting, ancient, creature. The young and fearless are forever terrified of getting old, repulsed by the old. And West puts this out for all to see, exploring it more than most of these movies do.

Inevitably, the killing starts. Pearl (Mia Goth, Suspiria) is drawn to the porn purveyors, an aging woman who longs (literally) for the days when she was young & beautiful, terrible and horny, and her husband could satisfy her. When they won't relent to her advances, she slays them. Once it starts, her husband has to help, killing each off, one by one until only self actualizing Maxine (Mia Goth, High Life) is left. Maxine is a force of nature, the debatable star of the movie, and the fact that they have Goth playing both Maxine and Pearl, the other debatable main character of the movie, is the grand design that West has for this movie, and the others forthcoming.

Given the sub-genre of horror movies, the hillbilly slasher, or backwoods slasher, that this movie ascribes to, its not particularly scary. And we are not particularly attracted to these types, so on the most basic level, it was just OK. But I do like the exploration of the elderly as another horror sub-genre, making Pearl an actual character with agency, not just "I kill to kill", and how he doubles down on the nudity and sex, eliciting our negative responses by including Howard & Pearl in it. West does seem to like making horror movies that are meant to be discussed over drinks after the movie, instead of just giggling off the adrenaline.

The prequel Pearl is already out, and the sequel MaXXXine is being produced right now.