“Incident at Raven’s Gate” – (1988, Australia, 94 minutes – rated R)
This was also released as “encounter at Raven’s Gate”, most likely due to elements reminiscent of Steven Spielberg’s “encounters of the third kind”. However, the aliens in “incident at Raven’s Gate” aren’t the least bit friendly, as we’ve seen now in many a horror film from Oz, everything out in the Bush is menacing.
We begin at the devastated Cleary farm where police Sergeant Taylor (Max Cullen) arrives to investigate strange occurrences.
Even though the farm is outside his district, the local cop named Skinner (Vincent Gil) appears to be AWOL and so Taylor finds the Cleary farm deserted, with fire damage and a burnt out truck out front.
There’s something very spooky about the place, which looks like a tornado went through it room by room. Also on the property is of all things an astrophysicist (Terry Camilleri) attached to Special Branch, who not only carries a gun but karate-chops Taylor into submission when Taylor presses him about his presence and what he knows.
We now flashback five days in the past, with Richard Cleary questioning his younger brother Eddie (Steven Vidler) as to whether he had checked the water system the day before: there are dead dehydrated sheep laying near a trough.
Eddie, who did a six month stretch for stealing a police car, has a lot to prove, even to his brother, and this isn’t an auspicious start.
Throughout the region, and in particular at the neighboring Raven’s Gate farm, inexplicable lights, electrical surges and blackouts are happening mostly unobserved. Even when animal deaths happen, for instance when ravens fall dead from the sky, or when the Cleary farm dog inexplicably turns on Eddie who has to kill him, the district’s residents seem unable to connect the dots.
Passions run high, especially with bad-boy Eddie the outsider serving as a catalyst.
Eddie has a thing with bartender Annie (Saturday Rosenberg) who herself is being stalked by unhinged cop Skinner who is getting more and more unstable.
As strange incidents mount, including the death of the elderly farmers at Raven’s Gate, Eddie’s finding himself more and more isolated: his brother doesn’t believe him, Skinner’s breathing down his neck and local toughs try to pick up fights whenever he goes into town. And so Eddie and his sister in law Rachel, herself an outsider from the city, get a bit closer than they should.
As Skinner catches up with Eddie at Raven’s Gate to question him about a petty theft in town, they both find the farm in a most peculiar state: water dripping from the walls, strange flashes of light, a mist hugging the ground and two bodies with the flesh seared off the bones.
Skinner runs off screaming, having gone over the edge.
Back at the Cleary farm, Eddie gets roughed up by his brother who saw him and Rachel kissing the night before, and conflicts escalate as more events cannot be explained.
“Incident at Raven’s Gate” is psychological and atmospheric rather than exploitative, and it mostly succeeds as such.
Rolf de Heer who directed the film, is from the Netherlands and I got the feeling he must have fallen in love with the Australian landscapes. His later film, “the tracker”, shows them off in a more thoughtful and straightforward way, but in “incident at Raven’s Gate”, de Heer’s shot compositions serve the atmosphere well. Yet somehow the two outsiders, Eddie and Rachel, seem to be the only ones not losing their marbles, even as they realize things are going very wrong.
As well, the plot has a few loose ends and gets a bit confusing at times.
The aliens are never seen, only the manifestation of their presence: intense, sweeping lights, gale force winds rattling doors and windows, much like… “Encounters of the third kind”. De Heer’s film stands on its own: claustrophobic at times, moody and with a few effective scares.
“Incident at Raven’s Gate” gets four jellybeans.
“Masters of horror: Dario Argento: pelts” – (2008, Canada/USA, 58 minutes – TV NR)
Despite not being a fan of Argento’s I had hopes for this one, based on a short story by F. Paul Wilson, author of the Repairman Jack series and “the keep”, among other titles. A lifelong Lovecraft fan, we find in Wilson’s “pelts” a sort of homage in the ancient city in ruins deep in the woods. This is where trapper Jameson (John Saxon) drags his son to check his traps and lay new ones at night.
And boy, do they find what they came looking for: simply the best raccoon furs Jameson’s seen in years, which will fetch a lot of money.
Funny how all those furs look identical, but hey, Jameson’s gotta get his drink on while his son skins the animals back in their workshop. Before passing out, Jameson calls furrier/trader Jake Feldman (Meat Loaf) and convinces him to drive all the way over to check out the furs.
Feldman very reluctantly drags himself away from the strip joint where he unsuccessfully tried to get some action.
By the time he and his shop foreman arrive at the Jamesons’, both father and son are dead in gruesome ways. Under the supernatural influence of the pelts, Sonny got a baseball bat and bashed in daddy’s face. He then opened a bear trap, bent over to head butt the pressure plate, slicing his face clean off.
Not one to lose his wits, unless boobage in dark, dank places is involved, Feldman and his foreman load the pelts in his trunk before hightailing it back to the city, already planning what kind of coat they will make to get rich beyond their dreams.
Unfortunately for them, everyone involved with the pelts will die gruesome deaths.
There are two main elements driving “pelts” as directed by Argento: T&A and gore. And there’s plenty of both, even a tad too much of the former, which makes the episode feel longer than 58 minutes. You can only watch Shanna (Ellen Ewusie) shaking and rubbing her bootie on Feldman’s lap for so long before you start clamoring for the next victim to get it…
And the premise, today, of the trapper selling illegal pelts to a furrier? Are they even still in business?
Visually, I recognized color use from previous Argento films, red, purple and blues striking against black shadows but this clearly is more commercial territory, commissioned for American television. Which ironically made it somewhat easier for me to watch and recognize that gore-hounds could do worse, but “pelts” just ain’t all that good.
“Pelts” gets two jellybeans.
