AM: I've never thought about this comparison, but it's true. Buñuel movie was a collaboration with Salvador Dalì like his next movie, "L'age d'or". Originally there was no reference to that, but at first blush there could be a connection based upon surreality. Fango's emasculation could have a symbolic meaning that deals with surrealism. Beyond that, there is something in common with that kind of cinema that didn't explain the things that showed, that was against the current. Logic was abandoned or even destroyed in a very provocative way.
ATFF: Buñuel's message could be "don't look at this movie with your eyes", Marfori's one could be "don't look with your... pride"?
AM: Well, I don't know... this is too much psychoanalytic.
ATFF: Talking about "Evil clutch", I think the main influence for the movie is first Sam Raimi's cinema, expecially "Evil dead", which is also explicitly quoted in your movie. It is a cinema with a precise direction style, a lot of steady cam... that is also used with personality by you in "Evil clutch". But what about the other influences, even small, for your movie?
AM: Sam Raimi of course. Apart from the classics, thinking about that period I would say "Re-animator".
ATFF: Brian Yuzna... I don't know how to spell it perfectly.
AM: That's ok, I know Brian personally. This is a thing that not everybody knows but the first idea of "Necronomicon" was born after several chats between me and him in Los Angeles after "Evil Clutch" releasing... I was supposed to direct one of the episodes of the movie and I also suggested him to make a movie about the Necronomicon. If you take a look at the credits, in the last lines you will read "thanks to Andrea Marfori and Agnese Fontana". This is something that almost nobody knows. Then I've had no role writing the story but the idea came out when we were talking togethere in his house.
ATFF: So you're a big fan of Lovecraft literature...
AM: Me personally? Well, I think it is an interesting gothic writer, but I definitely prefer Machen. At the time Brian movies were always about Lovecraft's stuff, we were discussing about this one in episodes. Me, Brian and a japanese director were supposed to direct the three episodes. Then the european one was directed by Christophe Gans because we couldn't find any funding in Italy, where "Evil clutch" had been ostracized. After that, the french director started a fantasy career... a genre that isn't that popular in Italy... However, "Re-animator" influenced my movie, expecially the scene with Fango that goes around with the head of Tony... that comes for sure from that movie. Then Fulci of course and the other italian important horror directors such Bava. Also Ed Wood, before becoming famous thanks to Tim Burton's movie. He was not so well known at the time of "Evil clutch", but "Plan 9 From Outer Space" was already a small classic. Then Murnau. I am graduated in philosophy and my thesis was about the estethic in Murnau's works. Then I started studying cinema, but I was already an expert on Murnau, expressionism... I also know the work of the expressionist writers of that period such Hanns Heinz Ewers... not very famous in Italy but he wrote the story for the movie "Der Student von Prag". In 1913 it was the forerunner of expressionist cinema. Then, ok Fulci... also Cronenberg's "Videodrome"...
ATFF: And not his previsious movies? Maybe "Rabid"?
AM: Also that one but mostly "Videodrome".
ATFF: In "Rabid" there is the girl with the strange phallic sting under her armpit. Maybe it has something to share with Arva's vaginal claw...
AM: Well, it wasn't intentional but maybe I had it in my mind...
ATFF: Tell me three horror titles that you would suggest to a beginner...
AM: Italian or foreign movies?
ATFF: As you prefer...
AM: First "La casa dalle finestre che ridono" by Pupi Avati, which I consider the best italian horror director, even better than Dario Argento. If I think about italian horror I think Pupi Avati is the best. "La casa dalle finestre che ridono", "Zeder" and "L'arcano incantatore" are three fundamental movies because when Avati directs horror movies, he makes something "cloudy" and satanic.
ATFF: The creepy atmosphere of the country near Ferrara...
AM: To me is true horror, so that one and also the other horror movies by Avati.
ATFF: So we've got one.
AM: We've got one. Another director is Frank Henenlotter with his "Basket Case" and "Brain Damage", which are very deep.
ATFF: That's the second one...
AM: Well, I would say the third is expressionist german cinema... Murnau.
ATFF: Nosferatu...
AM: Also Herzog's one! I really liked that... Oh, I was forgetting a movie that I love, that scared me when I was a child: Dreyer's "Vampyr".
ATFF: Absolute masterpiece, gorgeous direction...
AM: Beside this classic vampire movie, I like Bergman's "Wild Strawberries", "The Seventh Seal" and "Cries and Whispers"...
ATFF: And "Hour of the Wolf"? I think it's closer to your cinema...
AM: Yes, also that one...
ATFF: Your fans want to know about your work with the actors. You said that there was some kind of similarity with the hypnotic acting on Herzog's "Heart of Glass"... were your actors sort of entranced?
AM: It's a hard thing to explain, I can't even explain it to myself! It wasn't easy to work with those actors... not because of them! This was a debut movie, a young director just finishing his studies at Centro Sperimentale... They wanted an essay movie, the idea was to make an essay movie about our navels, frustration and all that stuff that I didn't care about... instead I wanted to direct a horror movie, maybe like Bresson would have done. I've red this comment somewhere in the internet "If Bresson would have directed a horror movie, that would have been Evil Clutch"... I apreciated that, it could be real, I don't know... Well, cast and crew were expecting an essay movie. The actors thought they were about to act in a minimalist way, with sighs... this is a movie full of screams! The result was an estrangement, they didn't understand what they were supposed to do... well, they understood what to do because I told them, but what I wanted from them was totally in contrast with their expectations of young actors. So they acted into a sort of trance, it was necessary to demotivate them in order to lose their expectations. And I told them "no, don't worry, no one is going to see this...". The two protagonists have tried to have a "good" career, today they reject the fact that they are somehow connected to this movie. They hoped "Evil Clutch" was going to be forgotten in few years and remembered as a juvenile error. Like saying "I was the bitch in Pigalle, but I was younger" and instead everyone reminds you as the bitch in Pigalle. So they were like "What? I'm a serious person!" and they wanted be so, following this ideal. I don't, I prefer a gipsy way of telling stories and so I've never had problem to associate myself with the movie, even when people talked bad about it. I am attached to some of the worst critics of "Evil Clutch", like one that said "the movie leaves you without the will to live".
ATFF: How many actors want Marfori's head? At least two...
AM: No, I don't think they want my head but surely they don't want to be related to the movie. Not only actors, also my partners at the time. Then we did different things, we started working separately because they wanted a career in minimalist movies, about feelings, very "holier-than-thou"...
ATFF: The soundtrack of "Evil Clutch" is great, but also FX, beside some details like Tony's rubber head...
AM: I like them, they are very splatter. I told them "guys, there's gotta be a lot of blood!", everywhere! Entrails and stuff...
ATFF: When Arva kills Algernoon she wears an incredible huge pair of everted eyeballs... Did she see what was around her?
AM: No, no, it was a latex prosthesis that covered her eyes completely and so she was groping in the dark... Anyway some actors are still happy to have worked on the movie. A guy from Viterbo told me he met Luciano Crovato (Algernoon, NdR) and he talked about the movie with fun. To me this is the best way to talk about it. The same for Stefano Molinaro, who played Fango, he has had an important career as actor and radio-speaker on Radio2.
ATFF: It's interesting to know what happened to them...
AM: Yes, Molinaro talks well of the movie too. Crovato is older than us and he already had a lot of experience in cinema. He was more professional. He knew that this movie could have been spectacular, that people may love it. Instead of Diego (Ribon, NdR) and Coralina (Cataldi-Tassoni, NdR), for them it was important to say something, to give a message...
ATFF: Different expectations...
AM: Yes, in those years it was very difficult to find some fundings for the movies, it could be the same now after the economic crisis and politics... culture is changed. But I don't support both right and left parties.
ATFF: Ok, the last thing. This is an unconventional movie, there are only few things that belongs to horror standards, for example: a moral message. A guy wants to have sex and he loses his genitals, another one wants to take some dope and he get killed. Is this your message to young people or is it only a homenage to classic horror cliches?
AM: It is a homenage to classics. The movie has a heavy sexuality, I wouldn't say that is a sexual phobic horror. Quite the opposite, I'd say that is very carnival... I mean, it's a horror, it needs some disasters! I would say that "Evil Clutch" has some sadomasochist aspects, with these castrating women... and the Oedipus complex... No, I don't really think that this is a sexual phobic movie.
ATFF: I want to thank Andrea for this very kind interview...
AM: Thank you to be here at the Festival, for the walk, the chat and the showing... And till the next!
ATFF: I hope you will be our special guest in next reunion day...
AM: For sure! Bye!
Watch the interview (in italian) on ATFF Channel:
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