Once the psychic fell out of her seance chair, and threw up green ectoplasm that turned into a book after white-masked magician zapped her through her crystal ball, and she knocked over a small framed picture of HP Lovecraft on her way to the floor as a fireball came through a door in space to destroy the Earth, and a space oracle named Sylvia narrated a short history of mirror/film magic, from Aristotle up to a 19th century magician from another dimension zapping psychics across time--and dimensions--only then I knew things were going to be OK.
I was home, the Cozzi of Starcrash and Hercules hadn't let unlimited access open source CGI stock footage, license-free music, endless time, and and Final Cut HD video color-style change his insane ways.
"Here," says the psychic passing the book to her client, played by the actress who played Olga in the original Suspiria, "I believe this is for you."
Yes, Luigi Cozzi's DIY HD video labor of love, Blood on Melies' Moon, is meant for me. I'm even quoted on the back of the Blu-ray. To paraphrase Maria Montez in Cobra Woman, his people are my people.
But until that book, man I'd been holding my breath. He hadn't made a film in 30 years. People change after 30 years. Anything might have come along and ruined his artistic voice in 30 years. He may have learned how to write realistic dialogue, or read Story by Robert McKee, or raised children who "wanna be in the pitcher" as WC Field's kid says in The Bank Dick. A crabby new wife might have tried to fix his 'flaws' and so push him into the hack vortex that has claimed so very many others.
I knew from the trailer that Melies is a kind of meta-fiction Cozzi capstone, depicting him going about his working day at Profundo Rosso, talking to his wife in bed, hobbling around to visit friends, the stuff legends do when they have nothing but time and Final Cut to make one last statement. And what if he lacked screen charisma? Not every director is convincing when playing themselves. You may lose half your loyal fanbase if they've seen you in close-up and you don't know your angles. They no longer see themselves in you, they just see you--you stole their spot. You made it awkward, like ruining a platonic friendship by hooking up one dfunk night - no matter what kind of 'just this once' talk,.
Part of why fans like me love Luigi is his total lack of self-awareness, it's so endearing and honest, never self-important, never laboring to seem better than he is, never trying to elevate his material and his genre into bourgeois respectability. He attacks a film the way my brother and I used to attack sandcastles with rubber monsters, HO scale army men, and UFO shovels. We grew out of that rich imagination, but not Cozzi. Watching his films, our inner child--patiently sleeping--wakes up like a sad dog when his owner comes home from the war. You forgot he was even still down there in your subconscious menagerie, but he was just sleeping until his best weird friend came over. Watching Cozzi movies, I can feel my inner dig wagging his tale excitedly, in that machine gun style rapidity that signals total joy.
BLOOD ON MELIES' MOON
(2016) Written/produced/directed by Luigi Cozzi
Looking sharp for any century in his natty red bowtie, Cozzi starts out the post-credits main body of the film walking down the busy overlaid streets of Rome, opening his store Profundo Rosso, and wobbling through his day in a kind exaggerated portrayal of himself, short and mystified, muttering to himself looking at old movie stills, as if he's trying to discreetly introduce us to the world of vintage European sci-fi films while doddering through his day. Neck forever craning back, as if in the front row of the cinema of life, agog at the magic of movies even as his neck hurts There's a cringe beat when he surprises his wife at home by walking into their kitchen in a tacky red mascot costume, no doubt meant to convey his childlike whimsy. We agree with his wife, it's tacky. He's starting out a real square--he even refuses the call to adventure by ushering an agitated guy babbling about mirror dimensions out of the store, not even listening to what he's saying--just another weirdo. Later, behind the register, he's so distracted by a phone call to his wife he lets the girl with the book from the seance sneak downstairs to the Argento Museum of Horrors (1) to be murdered by the waxwork/mannequin killer from the Blood and Black Lace exhibit, everything already so drenched in tin can horror he doesn't even hear her screams, or the blaring non-diegetic royalty-free rock music. He only sees, cleaning up before closing, that she wrote a cryptic note on the telltale mirror from Argento's seminal Deep Red, and now he has to wash it off and grumble about kids today. Then later she calls out to him in his dreams from beyond mortality's dimensional border. Wake up, Luigi! Your particiapation is demanded by the weird interdimensional drama to come.
Even with all that, it's going to take some big 4 AM staring into bathroom mirror, wondering about which Cozzi is the real one, and being attacked by a dream werewolf, to jolt him into the mystery, especially when the other girl from the seance shows up looking for her slaughtered and interdimensionally-sucked in sister, and mentioning that book. Bro. It's all connected; and now they're working together to solve the mystery - each going a different direction! Finally!.
For Cozzi that means bopping from one friend's book-filled apartment to another, also stopping by make-up and effects studios, soundstages, film schools, and scientific institutions. Everyone knows him or knows his work, and doesn't genuflect but gives his legendary status its due. Lamberto Bava makes Cozzi and his wife dinner and then shows him how to use the internet; Maria Cristina Mastrangeli (that foxy bassist who dies too early in Paganini Horror), is a make-up artist (she dies too soon here too). There's a photo of a young Ennio Morricone and Sergio Leone chillin' like villains on the wall of the Italian Film Institute along with a dozen other signifiers of past legends in Italian cinema, Cozzi walks past it all in a slow-mo hobbit strut, some of the faces I didn't quite know or get, which is fine. As a film person, it's refreshing actually.
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| ooh ooh! I know the answer |
The vibe of all his hustling around, actually, reminded me of visiting a buddy in a foreign land and having him show you the sights while taking you from friend to friend, dealer to dealer, to help you find drugs (since you didn't want to bring any thru customs), Each person you drop in on is so cool you wish you spoke Italian to understand what they're saying while you look around at their cool book and art collection and can only manage to say "Cosi fantastika, eh? Ciao!" And you're off again.
Eventually you're so high from classic Italian sci-fi/horror's fumi collaterali you forget all about the drugs. When a giant steampunk spaceship comes out of a book and takes you on a shortcut from Rome to Paris--normally a two-hour flight--that involves leaving the Earth and traveling all the way around the galaxy, looking at UFOs from classic science fiction out of the porthole, you wonder if you took the kind of drugs so good you forgot you took them. In fact maybe you forgot the last 30-40 years of life, and are back to being a wild-eyed ten year old, frothing at the mouth with excitement over space ships and stop motion monsters, the wonkier the b.
And maybe I sound like a Cozzi apologist (Cozzipologist?) but the man himself maintains a dry deadpan veneer that stops his Shrooms 101 pontification and DIY home movie travelogue-in' from ever getting "silly." or self-indulgent, or becoming a midlife dadsploitation 'vanity' project. And it's hard not to smile, just as it's hard for him not to smile, when he gives himself several of those Spielbergian slow "awestruck" dolly zooms, looking up at some amazing sight behind the camera. You never get the impression he's quite able to visualize anything other than a glowing green screen, rather than whatever effect Adobe can muster from its PD bin; he keeps a straight face (most of the time), avoids looking into the camera (some of the time), and never gets campy or self-conscious at the absurdity of it all (aside from that bit with the furry red mascot suit).
And as the film trudges along, he becomes way more believable as himself, modulating his performance to compliment the energy of each of his scene partners, which is what many of us do naturally in life, leaving them to set the tone of each interaction, counter-mirroring their extreme temporal shifts, overplaying when they underplay (his cool wife is sublimely low-key and kinda steals the show by not stealing anything); underplaying when they overplay (Philippe Beun-Garbe, who has a habit of looking at Cozzi like a cobra trying to hypnotize a hamster) and allowing conversations to kind of peter out before he says something like "OK - so I guess I'm going this way, arrivederci."
And that's because Cozzi is making the kind of movie Cozzi would love to see but no one else ever makes. He assumes you've seen a lot of other movies, like Quentin Tarantino, he's like the antithesis of banality - rather than follow the heard over its familiar courses like the rest, he takes stock and realizes which tracks aren't being run, which ways aren't being followed, there's no real focus group shit involved with that kind of thing, unless you're a hack whose film knowledge begins with last week's edition of Variety. That's because you're making movies for yourself, the movies no one makes and you know because you've seen all theirs, and they're all not that.
With Cozzi, for example, he never lets a moment just lay around. Even if he's just standing outside the store monitoring the autograph line for Dario Argento's book signing, he's overlaying deep rich color fields under planetary smash-ups; marching Italian war veterans; skies full of stars, fireworks, close-ups of fans in weird masks and Freddy gloves; camera men looking at the monitor in their van, dlowing out to the seance lady's TV. Macabre Italian movie posters from the 20s-80s, short clips from his or Argento's oeuvre; famous landmarks awash in Cozzilla colors; his wife's home movie shots of standing in front of the Mexican pyramids; gothic buttresses and looming gargoyles; outdoor dance classes; cemeteries; twisting piazzas wreathed in deep reds and greens; solarized shots of Italian Film Institute exteriors; a fake blood slicked onto glass; a quantum theorist in her (real) lab, talking the plurality of worlds; a big empty dark soundstage with weird giant alien puppets standing around, waiting for some holiday parade yet to come; the Roman night sky blazing deep red, blue, or dark green; all the weird sights of his Profundo Rosso and its downstairs attraction, The Argento Museum of Horrors. Every cool, creepy, strange or mystical free attraction his zero sum budget can buy, all as stops in a long journey towards early film education and interdimensional doorway closing. Meta-Mecha-Mental.
And just to keep things edgy, that evil masked magician is always sticking his neck out of passing mirrors, slashing up anyone who might be even remotely involved with that book (shades of Argento's Inferno -in that he never thinks to just take the actual book). The attacks are never scary per se; the blood looks fake abstract; but the throat opening up make-up shots are first rate and the blood is more realistic when it's not spattered on white walls or glass. And the sudden heavy metal makes it seem like a tribute to Argento, especially in one beautifully lit and composed scene in the shiny white make-up department, evoking of course Tenebrae.
In sum: never before has a film about science fiction film history, told as a science fiction movie starring the director as himself been able to pull off the difficult hat trick of not lapsing into trite self-congratulation within the first two minutes, irritating meta smirkiness after ten, excruciating neorealism after twenty, and switched to something else by thirty. Sure I miss the classic Cozzi signature analog effect collection, But surprisingly, even with CGI that magic is not completely lost. I don't know how he did it, but Cozzi has even snuck in that same ingenious amateur analog tactile outsider DIY purity to green screen CGI, open source effects, FCP color styling, and royalty-free stock footage.
Above all, he overcomes the risks of directing himself as himself by his keen love of dead pan wit. That kind of thing can't be taught. You either get it or you don't. You can count the actors who can do it on one hand: Charlie Sheen and Richard Crenna in Hot Shots Part Deux, Sterling Hayden in Dr. Strangelove, Richard Burton and James Coburn in Candy. If you think of any others, do let me know...
Perhaps Cozzi's secret for skirting around all the 'feels,' the folksy pastorale "movies are the wings of your dreams, grandson!" cringe, is the way he avoids any kind of situations ever getting real, or heartfelt, scary or tragic-- indeed, Cozzi avoids any kind of sustained emotion of the sort that critics love about his bigger budgeted peers, like Benecio del Toro and Tim Burton. In fact, if he finds an emotion, he runs from it even faster than we would; he does this by always dialing outwards, enlarging the scope the more dramatic transpersonal intimacy becomes, going galactic when most go the opposite. In space no one can hear you cry, so Cozzi learns how rocket above exosphere at the slightest lip tremor. By the end of Melies there's been at least six brutal murders, severed heads talking on the phone, etc, but somehow all that's forgotten; the ladies looking for their slain sister melt away in the distance once the aperture dilates to astral scope, to the Silver Age Marvel comic's Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko-verses: Gods and monsters riding giant surfboards, Dr. Strange and Galactus standing on flat-topped asteroids floating through the quantum realm while debating the foolish strivings of the humans trapped in the space/time continuum.
CLOSING FAST
Sure, some things have changed in the 30 years he's been away: analog special effects like the Lite-Brite disco ceiling star fields, solder-patched lady Telos, and erector set hydras--and sure I miss the thunderous major key scores he scored from people Nino Rota and John Barry--all replaced here by major key, royalty-free (presumably) tracks ranging manically from blaxploitation to electronica to French rap to old school 80s synths, to mainstream Goldsmith-style sweep.. Sure I miss those colorful crazy costumes, all the glitter, leather, huge Ghost of Xmas present robe/coats and gold Versace armor. And sure I miss the old-school cape-twirling super-villainy of films past, but you got to love an ending where everyone still living goes home fulfilled, to whatever dimension they started with.
And most of all, you got to love that after 30 years, Cozzi hasn't changed, grown up or mellowed out or 'matured' one bit. He's far from an old grandpa spinning yarns for a dewey-eyed grandson about how "movies are our magical dreams." we get in something like Hugo. Movies are magic for Cozzi, too, but presumes you already know that, so there's no need to spark the self-satisfied glow of the dewey-eyed bourgeois Academy, reminding them once again how they've spent their lives lifting up the proles with the wings of dream. Cozzi is beyond class, beyond awards and humble-sheathed grandiosity -- he is the grandson and the grandfather, or rather the cool uncle. He's the complete unit, all ages of creeds and classes, merged into one unhinged maniac. His reach for the stars is more the symbiotic relationship between eye and screen, all the unions and signatures edited out. His message isn't magic of fantasy for the downtrodden but that when you look at the image and the image looks at you. It sees the same you as you see when it's not you, that comforting dip into the dark anonymity has hatched like an egg and there you are, awake and asleep at the same time, rolling in the dream rather than being the dreamer. You can see it in every little smile that comes over Cozzi's face as he does his little dreadlocked dance around the store to royalty free Italian rap at the end. He's no longer grumbling to some invisible version of himself that even he barely notices. He's gone 'full circle' like Siddhartha, Dorothy Gale, or Michelle Yeoh, he's justified the madness of the artist off in the weeds, he's the Father McKenzie who doesn't need more than one or two people to hear his sermon, so f--k off, Paul! We'll put our faces by any old door we want.
That man in the mirror, the mad magician on whose blank mask we all project the world... and vice vera That thing out there, Morbius, it's me!
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| Mr. Cozzi Surmises |
MORE from Acidemic's COZZI Collection:
Hurrah for Luigi Cozzi! HERCULES (1983) & the Mighty Coates Canon! (Sept 7, 2019)
Cozzi Breaks the Cake: THE BLACK CAT (1989) (Feb 9, 2022)
Gettin' Ripped: Luigi Cozz's PAGANINI HORROR (1989) (March 20, 2020)
13 Films for Week X of a Pandemic: CONTAMINATION (1980) (April 5, 2020)
7 Choice Star Wars Nugs: STARCRASH (1978) (Jan 23, 2019)
10 Reasons COZZILL A (1977) (Nov. 6, 2022)
