film classics

Not for the faint of heart, Russian director Elem Klimov’s final feature recreates the Nazi invasion of Belarus, circa 1943, as seen through the initially cherubic and soon permanently scarred eyes of a Soviet teen, Florya (Aleksei Kravchenko), who is conscripted to fight alongside partisan forces. He witnesses all manner of horrors, which are visualized by Klimov and his collaborators on the razor’s edge between the realistic and the surreal. Initially the film has the blunt feel of one of Sam Fuller’s war pictures with their ceaseless narrative momentum. Then things grind to a halt with a lengthy, carnivalesque setpiece in which the SS brutalize a village and over the course of which Florya seems to age before our eyes into a shell of his formerly innocent young self. The images get as much under our skin as they do his, and brilliantly set the stage for a provocative, point-blank finale in which Florya meets (a version of) der Führer and finds a sobering clarity amid all the relentless madness. (Criterion)

You’ve surely seen the tie-in T-shirts—the distorted demon-face of a pos- sessed cat smiling against a garishly orange backdrop—since Japanese director Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s first feature has long been a cult item overseas. Yet the film’s underground rep still can’t prepare you for just how visually and tonally bizarre this horror comedy about six schoolgirls who visit a haunted country house turns out to be. Ôbayashi throws everything at and on the screen: a flying decapitated head, a dancing scienceroom skeleton, even a carnivorous piano that chows down on any who dare to play it. Moment by moment the film reinvents itself, terrifying you most with all the unhinged imagination on display. It’s a classic midnight movie staple, as well as a terrific gateway into Obayashi’s singular oeuvre, which traverses genres, moods and themes with similar abandon. (Streaming on Max.)

Purple Rain (1984, Albert Magnoli, United States)

The inimitable Prince Rogers Nelson transposed his flamboyant per-

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BY FREDRICKA MAISTER