Harry Kümel may not be a household name (unless, perhaps, you live in his native Belgium where he’s been recognised with film prizes and taught classes on film), but in the early 1970s he directed a pair of horrors, Daughters of Darkness and Malpertuis, which have now become minor cult classics – and rereleased by Radiance Films in lavish 4K. Both films were screened at London’s FrightFest in August of this year, with Kümel himself, now 85, in attendance for Q&As.
Both films, and especially Daughters of Darkness, are sumptuous-looking, grand and Gothic in the best tradition of 1970s European horror. On the basis of visuals alone the films richly deserve the treatment they’ve been afforded here. These discs also promise “a slew” of special features, though I can’t offer any opinion on those features at present.
On the basis of the films themselves, they probably don’t deserve repeated viewings. Daughters of Darkness, a lesbian-tinged vampire melodrama taking place in a grand hotel in Belgium, is the better of the two, yet still a curiously dull little film. It’s similar to the sort of picture Hammer had been putting out for nearly two decades at this point, albeit with an increased level of eroticism more at home in the Italian, Spanish, French and Swedish genre cinema of the era – it is, in short, Eurotrash, and trashy enough at that to be sampled for Rob Zombie’s “Living Dead Girl”, back when Zombie was better-known as a hillbilly rocker than a sleazy film director.
Malpertuis, the much messier follow-up to Daughters of Darkness, is something else, an entirely artsier production whose oft-incomprehensible plot is taken from a novel by prolific Belgian pulp pedlar Jean Ray; briefly, a young sailor finds himself inside a labyrinthine mansion full of sinister eccentrics who claim to be his relatives, and slowly he and the others begin to take on the personas of Greek gods and mythological figures. Malpertuis managed to snag Orson Welles during one of his frequent career lows, as well as multiple highly distinct performances by Susan Hampshire, the English actress who brought respectability to British television productions in the early 1970s. Francophone viewers will also appreciate cameos from yé-yé giant Sylvie Vartan and husband Johnny Hallyday. With a certain pedigree to its cast and a high level of artistic ambition, the film went on to play at the Cannes Film Festival and even achieve a Palme d’Or nomination; it was not, however, a success and ended up harming Kümel’s career. Like the similarly witchy Suspiria, it’s disorienting, full of dizzying camera movements, and sits queasily on the borderline between the avant-garde and exploitation, but unlike that masterpiece it is ultimately frustrating where Suspiria is beguiling.
Both films share a rich visual language, superb art direction and a painterly eye for surreal compositions, but are let down by weak and often confusing scripting and editing that doesn’t help matters.
★★☆☆☆