MVD Visual: This Old Man (1975) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of MVD Visual

MVD Visual continues to roll out the red carpet for the oeuvre of Francesco Lucente, the man behind three of the toughest films I’ve ever had the displeasure of reviewing for the blog.  More capable at wearing out his welcome with his exorbitant unnecessary running times typically spanning two and a half hours than competently telling an engaging story, Lucente’s films display a particular brand of ineptitude not even impudent trolls like Uwe Boll have managed to wreak havoc upon the film community.  So it came as a shockingly complete surprise that his debut 1975 twenty-four minute short film This Old Man, a wordless countryside foray into ghostly understated horror, actually kinda sorta worked.  Maybe that’s where his strengths lie, on brevity and refraining from allowing his characters dialogue.  In any case, it was an unexpected pleasantry and thus far probably the only film of his yet I’m inclined to rewatch or show others.  Not quite on par with Ray McKinnon’s The Accountant but a nice quiet rural sort of Southern Gothic pre-Halloween treat.

 
With a cast of only two actors, Alf Lamers as a nameless drifter and Mario Lucente as the titular old man he encounters, This Old Man begins elusively as a low key midwestern sort of travelogue through the snow and woods.  As the drifter saunters about, he notices a wrinkly elder who frankly looks a lot closer to the troublemakers in Trash Humpers donning old man masks than a real elder.  What stands out particularly is his WWII coat and his self-portraits.  At one point they sit in a rusted-out car body together with the man seemingly disappearing and reappearing from sight.  As their ‘mutual’ journey continues, they end up in an abandoned and frozen hotel.  With no option otherwise for shelter, the drifter follows the old man deeper into darkness, coming across corpses and bones within the wood milling portion of the grounds, gradually losing his sense of reality and self as he ventures further into subterranean depths.

 
Made when he was only fifteen years old, lensed in grainy and textured 16mm color by Morris Hall in standard 1.33:1 fullscreen with leading star Alf Lamers contributing the film’s understated, somewhat haunted acoustic score, This Old Man for what its worth kinda worked as a proto-The Evil Dead quiet spooker.  Not necessarily a gory or scary film but still nebulously ominous with a sense of encroaching dread and unease.  While the film doesn’t have any characters conversing or speaking, the silence adds to the ambience and interpretive nature of the piece as dialogue has never been Lucente’s strong point.  The two actors, Alf Lamers as the nameless drifter and Mario Lucente hiding underneath an old man mask, are fine though the film’s true character are the abandoned surroundings which gives the picture a kind of Session 9 horror quality to it. 

As with previous MVD Visual offerings of Francesco Lucente, every single picture including this one made as a preteen gets a secondary compact disc featuring tracks from the film’s soundtrack.  The 16mm footage is handsomely restored with the audio being offered in either 2.0 stereo or remixed 5.1 surround sound.  Neither track is necessarily demonstration material but they sound good enough.  Beyond that, there are no extras otherwise to speak of.  This was a nice little number and a reprieve from what I’m used to getting from Francesco Lucente which is generally swill.  This Old Man did not convert me to the dark side with Lucente but the interpretive as well as atmospheric natural woodsy qualities made for a somewhat cosey viewing with the Fall season looming upon us.  Finally something from this guy I’m okay with.

--Andrew Kotwicki