Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I’m proud to report that I was fully back on board the classics train this week, as I powered through three essential films that were all high on my to-watch list. One Piece still dominates a fair portion of the household’s viewing hours, but I’ve been making a point of setting some evenings aside, and should hopefully be back on a more reliable film schedule going forward. As for One Piece itself, we’re currently near the end of Whole Cake Island, meaning I will soon be watching One Piece’s incomplete, ongoing current arc.

That fact seems absurd to me. Just one year ago, One Piece was an implacable monument, a challenge I might get around to once I’d retired or something. I’d never have dreamed the show would evolve into something as gripping and dramatically complex as Hunter x Hunter – but here I am, emphatically wrong, happily equipped with the knowledge that there are two outstanding shonens in the world, and one of them is a legit fantasy epic. Anyway, let’s get to the movies!

First up this week was Prince of Darkness, one of the last key John Carpenter films I had yet to see, and the middle entry in his loose “Apocalypse Trilogy.” The middling reviews had me a little concerned for this one, but it turns out I had nothing to worry about. Prince of Darkness kicks ass, and stands as a worthy followup to The Thing, while treading its own apocalyptic road.

Prince of Darkness’ plot is fairly simple: a secret Christian sect has been keeping what may well be the spawn of the devil under lock and key for thousands of years, until their charge suddenly starts rattling at its chains. Gathering together a group of top scientists and graduate students, our team must analyze and unlock the secrets of evil itself, before a dark awakening dooms all of humanity.

It’s a terrific conceit for a horror movie, and slots in neatly between The Thing’s purely scientific apocalypse, and In the Mouth of Madness’ purely fantastical one. Among all of Carpenter’s films, this one might make the best use of what Sean T. Collins defines as the “monumental horror” image – a single, stark image that serves as an omen or harbinger of an unspeakable threat. The alignment of the sun and moon offers a consistent promise of unspeakable terror, while outside, homeless citizens make silent offerings to the sky, earth, or something in between. And with the church they’re investigating under siege by a growing army of demonically possessed victims, as well as their own party slowly succumbing to the will of darkness, the film is able to draw on the same dramatic well as Assault on Precinct 13, offering a cascading wave of siege lines as evil draws nearer.

Not all of the film’s kills are thrilling, but there are more than enough stark single images to make for a full horror feast. Additionally, I was delighted to see both Victor Wong and Dennis Dun taking major roles, after being such strong players in Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China the year prior. Even now there are far too few opportunities for Asian actors in American cinema, and even fewer if you’re specifically considering roles that don’t require an Asian actor. Seeing Carpenter cast these two as the brilliant, troubled professor and hot-headed but ultimately reliable grad student was a welcome surprise, and Wong in particular is a dynamic talent who I wish had a longer career. Always nice to see great directors appreciating great talent.

After that, I checked out my first work by a director I’d been meaning to get to forever, Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Aguirre centers on a group of conquistadors sent deep into the jungles of Peru in search of El Dorado. Eventually, given the slow process their massive party is making, the leader sends a small contingent down the river in search of glory: just forty men, including their commander Atienza, representative of the throne Ursua, and the restless second in command, Aguirre. With angry natives assaulting them, the river destroying many of their supplies, and no city of gold in sight, Atienza’s journey seems likely to end in retreat – until Aguirre mutinies, establishing Ursua as a puppet king, and leading his crew on a damned journey down the Amazon. 

Aguirre is a tour de force of violence, desperation, and longing. The film crafts an entire universe within its creaking rafts, a restless society that it feels impossible to look away from. It’s easy to see how this film inspired Apocalypse Now, and indeed basically any future film of mad ambition crashing on the untamable wilderness of the natural world. Distant shots pan around their frail bound logs, emphasizing their fragility in the mouth of the beast, all eyes haunted and looking to the horizon. El Dorado shifts from a goal to a dream to a desperate hope, as supplies dwindle and humanity is abandoned, all under the watchful eye of Aguirre.

And oh my god, Aguirre! Klaus Kinski’s performance is the electrifying centerpiece of this film, a study in sunken eyes and raised cheekbones, like some lich lord nervously doting over his phylactery. Just the way he flicks his eyes or squares his jaw conveys depths of canny intelligence and malice; through his slurred suggestions to his henchman, he wields death with the lazy certainty of the morally bankrupt. The fury behind his eyes is so intense it feels like it must be sincere; and indeed, apparently Herzog would whip Kinski into a rage before each take, just to burn his anger away into the smolder we see on-screen. Kinski is an absolute triumph as Aguirre, and I cannot wait to see the rest of his tempestuous collaborations with Herzog.

On the whole, Aguirre is beautiful, triumphantly performed, and devastating in its articulation of mankind in decline. There is humanity in his companions, and even humor in Werzog’s dry visual appraisal of the situation, but the film’s pull rests in the nervous flicker of Aguirre’s eyes, as we wonder what schemes he could be hatching next. Though its title character is a monster, the camera’s frame makes no easy, comforting moral judgments – he is triumphant until the end, a beacon of rage and glory even as the world burns around him. My highest recommendation for this one.

After that, I decided I might as well continue my journey into bleak European cinema, and checked out Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. I’d been meaning to watch Stalker forever, since my understanding is that it is an essential cornerstone of one of my favorite styles of horror storytelling. Monsters and murderers are great, but my ideal horror stories tend to dispense with recognizable, understandable villains, and instead present a world that feels altered and “wrong” in some indescribable way. Such stories challenge our confidence in navigating this world, sometimes forcing us to reassess our preconceptions about reality, and often hinting that the underlying truth is more beautiful or terrible than we could bear to witness.

Lovecraft’s stories thrive in this space, though they’re frequently reduced in popular culture to mundane signifiers like tentacles and squid-faces, rather than the bleak realization of insignificance that actually makes his work powerful. Kafka also felt most at home here, given he could never conceive of a monster more terrifying than himself. Other scattered stories also embody its appeal – the exemplary collection “The Weird” catalogs as many as it can, containing a vast number of standouts like The Summer People (Shirley Jackson), The Hospice (Robert Aikman), and Tainaron: Mail From Another City (Leena Krohn). And in film, the monumental horror images I previously mentioned frequently echo its allure – rather than building atmosphere through carefully sculpted prose, films can offer visual totems without explanation, black streaks of discord that poison the mundane world they inhabit, tainting all with their inexplicable, somehow fundamentally wrong existence.

All of this is a long walk around to my point, which is that Stalker positively shimmers with this not-quite-rightness, as two men known only as the Professor and the Writer are guided by a third, the Stalker, through the fantastical Zone. The Zone appeared one day without explanation, a place of danger and destruction, but also potentially revelation. The military guards its borders, but practiced Stalkers can navigate its boundaries, negotiating with its strange consciousness, and leading willing souls to its central chamber. There, it is said you can be granted anything you wish – but what do you wish for, and can you trust the contents of your own heart?

There are no actual supernatural occurrences in Stalker – merely the threat of them, draped over the film’s post-industrial wasteland like a malevolent shroud. Instead, the film mostly concerns the Stalker carefully navigating invisible boundaries, attempting to instill a sense of faith and reverence in his skeptical companions. The Writer seeks recognition, but also fears it – after all, if he is truly understood, what will he have left to write about? The Professor seeks definition, but also distrusts it – disillusioned with his own work, he cannot fully condemn the urge for faith. The three of them squabble endlessly as they progress through a landscape brimming with invisible traps, as the Zone seems to unpeel each of them one layer at a time. By the end, they are stripped bare, the obsessions that drive them lit harshly in the Zone’s silent gaze.

If you go into Stalker expecting a traditional horror experience, you’re bound to be disappointed – the film is two and a half hours of slow-paced debates and wandering around a dilapidated industrial park. But as both an unsettling tone piece and a journey into human psychology, Stalker succeeds brilliantly, essentially achieving the same catharsis of self-knowing that most horror films achieve through more conventional fears. It is not the axe in the door that frightens; after all, we’re safe on our couches, watching the murderer from a safe remove. It is the look in the victim’s eyes – first desperation, then bargaining, then certainty, as they are forced to run the calculus of their own life’s worth. Like all the best horror, Stalker strips us of pretension, and makes us face ourselves.