THE BURROWERS - PASSION

THE BURROWERS: It’s surprising that the Western and Horror genres don’t cross paths more often. Although there have been a few recent exceptions to the rule (Dead Birds was a valiant effort and Ron Howard’s The Missing certainly got a spooky start), J.T. Petty’s The Burrowers rides tall in the saddle as an excellent example of both. After a bloody attack against local settlers, a posse is formed to track down the alleged Indians responsible for the massacre and bring back the kidnapped survivors. Unfortunately, there are a lot worse things than Indians in the desert. And one by one, the searchers (make no mistake, there are plenty of John Ford references) fall victim to a pack of underground monsters who feed on rotting flesh. The concept sounds similar to Tremors, but the execution is worlds apart. There are no yucks to be had here, just an unrelenting sense of impending doom. Petty has the cast to pull it off with the sort of panache that deserves more than a direct-to-DVD premiere – even his creatures are a convincing mix of CGI and practical effects. But for all its artistic qualities The Burrowers is still nothing more than a glorified creature feature...with cowboys. Extras include a commentary and two brief featurettes. PASSION: Europeans have chided Hollywood’s prudish view of sex on film for decades; insinuating that we’re too immature to appreciate the formal qualities of the nude body, the art inherent in eroticism. And they’re probably right. One of my old film professors confessed he only watched Bergman films to check out the naked ladies. So our “peepshow” perspective on erotic films makes it pretty hard to comprehend a film like Passion (1971), a film that was naughty enough to get held back even in its home country of Italy. Of course, by today’s standards the film – which stars Italian sex symbol Laura Antonelli – is fairly chaste, sporting nothing more than a few closed mouth lesbian kisses and a messy seaweed covered three-way. But writer / director Patrick Longchamps veers away from the usual softcore situations and fashions his film after the obtuse and metaphorical oeuvre of Antonioni and Fellini. The sexually adventurous Simona (Antonelli) seduces a young lover, but their relationship soon grows to include an emotionally repressed local girl held prisoner in her father’s mansion. Passion aspires to be a lot of things, but the end result is a pretentious collection of abstract imagery (some quite visually striking) with just enough nonsensical European meandering to pretend it’s “art” rather than “exploitation.” MYA’s transfer is a bit on the rough side, but when Antonelli looks at you with those beautiful brown eyes, trust me, you won’t notice it a bit.