June 27, 2011

“WELL IT CERTAINLY ISN’T OUR MISTAKE.” Kindertrauma’s “Stream Warriors” series continues to be a fantastic guide to overlooked horror/suspense gems, now available on Netflix Instant Viewing. Last night’s movie was 1969’s Games, a creepy, twisty little pleasure-cruise of a movie.

The premise: A plush New York couple live in the world’s most awesome apartment, filled with pinball machines based on car accidents (“You’re Dead, Man!”); pop art about infidelity; spirally things; crazy porcelain-and-gilt masks, and similar rich and strange flotsam. From the luscious jewel tones to the ’60s seafoam and lavender, the colors in this movie are just a joy. Even the crocheted afghans are art-designed within an inch of their lives. Plus the entire movie takes place in the apartment, so although you get terrific lightning, rain, and falling leaves outside, you never really leave the glittering web.

The rich couple enjoys spooky dress-up games, living in a decadent playground free of any actual children. Then one day a mysterious European saleslady/con artist (Simone Signoret–!) rings the doorbell and insinuates herself into their lives. She holds their childish, American “games” in contempt, and begins to introduce some more dangerous varieties. There’s simulated wife-beating… simulated adultery… but there’s also a very real gun.

As Kindertrauma notes, several of the final twists are easy to guess if you’ve seen this kind of movie before, but the pleasure is in the journey and not the destination. There are a couple real scares, about a thousand stunning shots (including more meditative ones, like the wife dreaming in a garden chair as rain begins to spatter and leaves begin to blow through her long hair), a great ambiguous femme fatale in La Signoret, and a slightly vicious class-war angle. The fun of this couple’s life is part of their problem (which gives a nice subtle edge of condemning the viewer for enjoying it so much!) because they have no sense of when the party needs to end.


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