Here is the trailer for Black Sunday and a short trailer for Eraserhead. I think they rate a comparison. The images are kind of similar. An obsession with texture, skin, mortified flesh, mud, decay, decomposition, punctured heads, a sexual revulsion, irresistable, much to the horror of the aroused. Bava’s tells a story, a vampire story that ends with the death of the monster. A monster brought to life by a drop of blood dripped into the eye socket of the corpse of the once beautiful, sexually voracious vampire. Eraserhead tells a story of a monster, brought to life by sperm ejaculated into a vagina. I have a theory, once upon a time David Lynch lived in Philadelphia, the mid 60’s. He experimented with mind altering drugs, LSD for example. He went to a run down movie theater and watched Mario Bava’s La Maschera del Demonio, released in America as Black Sunday. It had a profound effect on him, like Bava he became a master of the Art/Horror film.
Here’s the trailer for Du rififi chez les hommes, the 1955 noir by Jules Dassin. An excellent movie available on Criterion with great added features. Back in the 80’s I was cutting trailers in New York. I was working with Nick Meyers, a great editor, music editor extraordinaire, and a fine composer as well. Nick grew up in cutting rooms, his father was Sydney Meyers, a famous New York editor as well as a director. Also one of the founders of the New York Editor’s Guild. Nick worked as an editor on a George C. Scott television show East Side, West Side while still in his late teens! Anyway his dad was a Socialist and was very involved in film and Socialism in New York. So one day at work I mentioned the great french film director Jules Dassin,( I pronounced it Jhoooles Dahssan, in my best fake French accent). Nick says “Who?”, I repeat my francophonic prononcement. Nick says” Oh you mean Julie Dassin, he’s from Brooklyn.” Nick’s dad and Jules were running buddies back in the NY Theater/Communist days. Julie had to go to Europe to escape the Communist witch hunts of the 50’s. Sydney Meyers, by the way, edited Film the Samuel Beckett/ Buster Keaton collaboration. It was shot by Boris Kaufman who won an Oscar for On The Waterfront (featuring a great performance by my uncle’s brother-in-law “Two-Ton” Tony Galento). Boris also shot films for Jean Vigo, Zero De Conduit, L’Atalante, in his own words his greatest collaborations.
