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This site is in not an affiliation of MalleuS but is an independent critique site created by Josie Kogge, who is in no way associated with MalleuS or their productions.
Last updated 6th August 2001
Now that I've looked at the story behind Looking for Gatri and the pioneering work of Malleus I think it's time to take a closer look at the feature itself. The version I have viewed is subtitled 'The Penultimate Cut' - which differs slightly to previous versions - and is the version that will be encoded with Div-X and released on the net with Shane Semler's imminent MalleuS HomepagE relaunch.
ACT ONE
The movie opens with Shane Semler's The Chronicles of Gatri logo which then ripples away as Malleus Presents hits the screen to Sean Jeffery's haunting beat. Morris-Henshaw and Ruth Elizabeth are credited and then Jeffery's score strums a chord as the title Looking for Gatri fills the screen. Finally Andrew is credit as writer and creator.
The screen is then filled with absolute blackness as Jeffery's theme fades to the background and we are greeted by a cacophony of rattling keys and straining doorlocks. It is unclear what is happening until a dim glow cuts reluctantly through the darkness and a shillouette can be seen. As the door slams the room is filled with a blazing light - almost harsh - and we see a man has entered his home, checking the door behind him is now locked properly. Already we see that this man brings light where there was once a foreboding darkness, and in locking the door behind him against the night he has seemingly banished the darkness from our arena.
He pauses and sniffs the air. He looks perplexed. This is almost a feral action as his instincts nag at him that this will be no ordinary night. A small shake of the head and he walks out of frame. An anticlimax.
Here Andrew Morris plays of visual trick on us as we are forced to undergo the previous scene again. The camera is once again within a dark room - a pitch dark room beyond the first - and a single harsh shaft of light intrudes from the hallway where Alex Monday entered his house. His shilouette once again enters the darkness as Jeffery's score becomes almost subliminal. Again Alex brings light, bursting into the room he is already focussed upon the stranger seated in the armchair before he can see her.
This is no shocking revelation. It would have been easy to have the camera on the stranger as the light comes on, then perhaps back to Alex doing a double-take as he is suprised to find the visitor - making the audience jump at the unexpected - but that is a cheap trick which would distract from the hint that Alex knows the stranger and appears composed and ready.
The 'guest' - an attractive woman in black - seems equally composed and almost reluctant to put down the book she is reading. There is an expression of smug self-satisfaction on her face as she rises from the armchair to greet Alex. A cut to Alex echoes the previous shot of him - unshaken and steeled against...what? As a viewer we are yet to find out.
"Qa Fariq Gatri?" asks the woman. To which Alex replies "Who are you? What are you doing in my house?" This confirms that the woman is both unknown and uninvited by Alex. Morris' delivery of the line is stilted and lacks conviction - one's initial reaction is that this is a second-rate actor struggling with a simple line - but it will become apparent that Morris isn't a medicre actor, Alex Monday is!
The woman reveals, cryptically, that the previous owner of the flat once let her in when she posed as an Avon Lady - a door to door cosmetics sales woman. Vampires, of course, cannot enter a house univited, but the woman has been given license to come and go by the previous tennant. We're yet to discover that this is Lady Mendax, Queen of the Vampires, but in retrospect we have to ask how did Mendax know that the flat would one day be owned by Alex Monday?
Alex threatens to call the police, seemingly threatened by the woman. Most men would be bemused, perhaps excited, to find an attractive woman waiting for him to get home, but Alex Monday is not most men. His mind does not even begin to reason that this might be an attempt at seduction from a secret admirer, or 'The Lads' having a laugh by letting a prostitute into his house to await his pleasure, that is not the world in which Alex lives.
"The phone is quite dead, my dear Qa Fariq Gatri" claims the woman. Now Alex is clearly unsettled. The title she has given him rings a bell. "What did you just call me?" The woman continues to taunt, knowing she has struck a nerve. Alex backs away into the corner of the room - and even that can't be done correctly, the corner is awkward and angled, his space is cramped by a plant and a fishtank with a pump that mechanically drones away in the background.
"I'm pleased to see that I'm jogging memories" says the woman seeing that Alex is already close to mental collapse. She delivers the line in a clipped, well educate accent and then proceeds to examine the various ornaments on the mantlepiece, almost like a dissapproving aunt.
Alex starts to approach the woman almost emploring that she has the wrong man - he slumps on the sofa as she continues to hound him. Then Alex slips. "Gatri. Qa Fariq Gatri" insists the woman. "Not any more!" emplores the now seated and still-collapsing Alex.
The woman continues to show more interest in the decor than the now trembling Alex as he feverishly lights a cigarette. The woman is always framed in close-up, looking down on the camera, dominating the viewer. Alex is seen in mid-distance, small and insignificant against the large sofa and fluffy toys. (Fluffy toys? Afraid of attractive women? He works in a bookshop and dresses in a tweed jacket. He's a gutless wimp.)
"I'm all better now" squels Alex almost hysterically. "I want nothing more to do with your sort!" The cracks are showing. Alex Monday is about to have a breakdown as he denies his 'lineage'. As his composure shatters Alex blurts out all sorts of secrets, egged on only by the occaisional well placed word or comment by the lady. She is clearly in control of the situation - this form of metal torture comes easily to her. She is almost the psychiatrist to Alex's patient as Alex confesses he's a former mental patient.
The story unfolds through Alex's narrative as he cuddles a toy bunny - he had a mental problem some years ago. He was dillusional. He believed himself to be a Van Helsing style vampire hunter - "stalking the night in search of Night Stalkers" (a referance to the Colcheck TV series). He lived a Walter Mitty existence (another pop-culture reference) as he had imagined adventures agaisnt the forces of darkness. Until one day he drove a stake into someone...the man went into shock and almost died. Alex was captured by the police and turned over to the authorities as a mental patient. Two years of drugs and therapy and he is now a reformed - if timid man - but he still cannot bring himself to say the word 'vampie'.
During this narrative Mendax peers though the closed blinds - is she signalling to someone?
(Goof spotting #1- a camera tripod is clearly vivisible against the wall behind Alex in this scene, about 5 and a half minutes into the feature!)
Content that ALex really is the timid disbeliever she suspected he was, the visitor now changes tact. With the taunting over and Alex's soul laid bare she now tries to convince him that SHE IS a vampire.
Alex reaches for his breifcase whimpering "where are my pills" and insisting that the woman is no more than a relapse as Act One ends.
ACT TWO
"I assure you that I am here, and I'm here to help you..." claims the woman, in tones that are now less clipped and authoritive. Roles are rapidly reversing as the emploring - albeit less manic - is coming from the visitor while Alex becomes the more placid observer. For the first time we see both characters in shot together, signifying a coming together and perhaps even changing of roles. The woman here spends a lot of time addressing the room, rather than looking directly to Alex as she did during her confrontation phase, one gets the impression that revealling to Alex his true nature is uncomfortable for the guest.
The woman then refers to Alex's people as "The mindless cattle 'pon which we feed...", a comment that clearly irritates the now turning Alex who snaps back "We're called HUMANS!"
Alex's defiance does not last long however, the woman invades his personal space, making Alex recoil as she berrates him for allowing himself to be locked in a cell for two years and 'damned near councilled to death." Alex still insists that he was delusional - and the visitor is nothing more than the result of a relapse.
The intruder now has to play her trump card - something she evidently has been holding back until now. She reveals herself - in the face of Alex's insistance that he's still mad and imagining her - to be THE ARCH APEX OF THE WAMPYR...
These sequences show the writers contempt for conformity. The vampire here is very much the outsider - operating not only outside society, but outside excepted (expected, even) moral standards imposed by society. We can see from her words and actions that she very much admired the Alex Monday of old - the lone hunter with fire in his soul, but has grown to despise him as he has been made to conform.
(Goof spotting #2- a close-up on Ruth during this scene shows that her dialogue is chronically out of sync with her lips. Morris-Henshaw explains this away - perhaps with his tongue in his cheek - by simply saying that he is in love with Catherine MacColl.)
"Arch Apex..?" mutters Gatri as his expression changes upon his face. We almost see in his that the broken mirror of his mind is finally super-gluing back together. "Mendax? Lady Mendax?!" exclaims Alex to a subtle audio cue from Sean Jeffery's score. The Alex groans - perhaps in despair, perhaps in awakening - as the visitor confirms that she is indeed the fabled and elusive Lady Mendax, The Great Bat.
This revelation brings a clear rearrangement of the visual composition of the set, as Mendax seats herself back in the armchair, Alex rises to his feet. Alex has been empowered by Mendax's confirmation of her identity, and Mendax seems somewhat deflated by having to reveal herself so completely to him.
Mendax's tone is now one of reason. Unburdoned by the cloak and dagger of concealing her identity, perhaps relieved that there is now a spark of recognition within Alex's mind, she tells Alex of his past - and the great Vmapire Hunters that preceeded him...
The scene fades to sepia as we close in on a castle, and infront of the castle a proud and arrogant knight. Gatri's theme once again accompanies us as the slow zoom establishes the Knight is alone. A jump cut to a different angle, and we see that the knight bears more than a passing resemblance to Alex. What is unclear is if this is Alex imagining himself in the roles of previous hunters as Mendax relates the tales, or if Alex Monday is much older than we think...
Hobbling up on the unwary knight is an almost comic witch-hag. One almost want's to shout 'It's behind you' in pantomime fashion! The knight turns and recoils breifly, the hag seems to pose little threat, but despite this the knight sheilds himself and draws his sword as the hag scratched at his sheild. The helpless hag is beheaded.
One is left with the impression that The Hag meant little or no harm, but the knight gave no quarter and clearly takes joy in hacking at the old lady. Clearly an uneven fight, but then the knight was a Crusader and isn't that what Crusades are all about?
We next see an orchard or arboretum. A figure sits mournfully beneath a tree, lost in thought. Again, an identical zoom in to the last reveals this man is a soldier dressed in the battlegarb of the 1850s. He holds a gun in one hand and, paradoxically, a crucifix in the other, his head is bandaged and bloody. Behind him we see a gravestone.
The soldier is suddenly alert, he rises to his feet and holds out the crucifix as something rises out of the ground. The shrouded figure mocks the gesture of faith - "Ah, a little man on a stick... is that supposed to frighten me?" - it blasphemes.
We clearly see a conflict within the mind of the soldier as he considers the gun over the icon of faith. The struggle of concience is all too brief as he levels the pistol at the wraith's head and pulls the trigger. We see the back of the wraith's head disintergrate in a spray of unholy blood.
(Goof spotting #3- as Morris-Henshaw rises to his feet we can see in the far background, to the left of the screen, a step ladder and a mannekin, both used by Ruth while shooting the scene.)
The opeining shot of the next vignette is pure genius on Ruth's part as director. The camera opens of an ancient Egyptian painting - the type we're all familiar with from the walls of temples and tombs. Immediately the scene is set by a series of effortless associations within the mind of the viewer. Egyptian painting equals tombs equals archeologists equals plundering the past equals mummies equals the curse of the undead. A wealth of information given by just one single shot.
That shot then turns into a wonderful visual pun as the camera pulls back to reveal that the supposed wall painting is actually a pattern on an elaborate waitcoat worn by an hot and bothered archeologist - from the dress cera 1920. He is clearly catching his breath, then resignedly turns to pace rapidly off camera. A cut shows he accelerates away clumsily, but at great speed accross the Egyptian scrubland, persued by a lumbering Mummy!
In a piece of camerawork that is nothing short of inspirational, Ruth Elizabeth pans against the oblique route taken by the lumbering corpse and brings the bandaged fiend into extreme close-up, with the camera coming to rest upon it's ragged torso.
Another cut takes us to the bottom of a gully, the archeologist charges into shot and runs headlong towards the camera, exiting actor's right having paused breifly midframe to retreive his Panama hat despite The Mummy now looming over him. This cheeky sequence actually has you rising in your seat.
A slightly clumsy cut sees the hero now seeking refuge behind a rock as the camera cuts to The Mummy shambling at speed through the scrub. Back with the hero, exhausted and out of options, patting his jacket pockets in the hope of salvation. Eureka! He finds a stick of blasting dynamite and rummages for his lighter as he anxiously glances up. One can sense the impending doom of the rapidly approaching Mummy.
The creature is atop of him as he leaps out from his cover and rams the blasting stick into the crerature's wrappings, turning tail and breaking into a run again as the Mummy continues it's persuit. This time he allows his hat to fall - not daring to retrieve it - and only coming to stop a safe distance from the helpless Mummy. The creature now senses it is doomed and raises an arm as if pleading for mercy. The creature explodes, leaving only it's legs behind!
The whole flashback sequence is a masterpiece of tail-telling, compressing The History of the Nobel Gatri into just three-and-a-half minutes. It's narrative and directional style differs drastically from the static set of the Mendax vs Alex elements that wrap around it, and yet it sits between these two acts very comforatably. This tale within a tale is the highpoint of Looking for Gatri.
The flashback fades back into the living room where Alex is told by Mendax that the hunting and killing of the undead must not stop. Mendax is still insisting that Alex must return to hunting, and by neglecting his duties he is "Letting the pandemonium reign...and it's far too early for that!" We suddenly get a hint of a MUCH bigger picture as Act Two ends.
ACT THREE
The third and final act opens with a now defiant Alex stating that he doesn't care. He orders Mendax out of his house.
Mendax has to expand on her statement that Pandemonium is reigning. Vampires are running amok in the night. Without an hunter to cull the population, without Gatri to keep them in check, they're getting out of control. Mendax - The Queen - is losing her grip on her subjects as her undead society slips into anarchy. She needs Alex - The Qa Fariq Gatri - to restore the order by hunting down and destroying those of her children foolish enough to fall into his clutches. Mendax is simply requesting that natrual selection, the survival of the fittest, be allowed to resume.
Mendax's chief concern is the finite supply of food for her race upon the planet. She quotes directly from DAWN OF THE DEAD by saying "The dead get up and kill, the people we kill get up and kill" enforcing the notion that vampires are animated corpses that perpetuate their race by empowering their victims with vampirism as the camera jump cuts (meaninglessly and ineffectively) about her head.
Now it's Alex's turn to mock as he muses at the notion that to the vampires he was The Bogeyman. Mendax gives her final speech - The Balance is mentioned and she states it must be restored.
Presumably Mendax is referring to the balance of nature - vampires are Darwinists!
The camera cuts to Alex. A subtle physical change has come over him. Compare the close up as he approaches his breifcase to the previous "Bogeyman" shot. Morris looks different. His whole physigonomy has changes. His body language is no longer nervous and frantic, but calm and collected. His expression is no longer one of bewilderment and fear, but a stern - almost scalding - mask. He looks through the camera and in one swift move has opened the suitcase, removed a pistol and is levelling it directly at the viewer.
There is an intangable timelessness about this sequence. Morris-Henshaw explains that in editing the piece on a computer he deliberately dropped the frame-rate at the mastering stage of the feature from this sequence on down from 25 frames per second (PAL) to 10 frames per second. It's a trick that works well.
"The bullets in this gun are hollow tipped and filled with holy water" proclaims Gatri. Mendax's reaction is one of genuine shock. She feels betrayed. Having believed Gatri a wreck she has built him back up to his former self for the benefit of The World as a whole only now to find the man she has mentally nursed back to health is turning on her. She has done her job too well!
Now Alex plays his trump card. The past two years of his life have been a sham. A carefully orchestrated hoax. His arrest, his supposed insanity, his loss of faith - all staged by Gatri to draw Mendax out of the shadows. Alex wants to kill The Queen Vampire (why is not made clear, perhaps for the same reason a hunter wants to bag an elephant or tiger) and has played a very humiliating but patient game of chess. Sooner or later he knew that Mendax would be drawn to him in exactly the manner we have seen unfold.
Alex is gloating at this point with "I tricked you, Mendax" entoned with a spiteful stab.
The roles are reversed utterly and completely as Mendax now pleads for her life using the logic she argued Alex back to health with. "Killing me would also upset the balance" she emplores after an awkward silence.
Alex continues to gloat over his prey. We are seeing for the first time the real Qa Faraq Gatri that The Vampires fear and hate. He is clearly unhinged and vindictive in the extreme. He berrates Mendax for being the worst of all her type and then belittles her by telling her that her death will mean nothing to The Balance (clearly The Balance is some sort of philosophy that Vampires and Gatris share). There are exactly 144,000 vampires at large in the world, Alex states, making it clear that although he appeared to be out of his head for two years he has been keeping close tabs on vampire population growth.
Alex reiterates to Mendax about the holy nature of the bullet he is about to fire into her. Alex is gloating as he procliams that it will be a most disagreeable death. He is clearly taking a sadistic delight in toying with his prey - Alex the cat, Mendax now the mouse.
Mendax, out of options, gives out an unearthly scream of anger which becaomes a leonine roar as she flies forward with her mouth opening to reptilian proportions bearing her fangs in an adiqute CGI effect.
One shot. Alex stands his ground calmly.
We pan onto Mandex, now prostrate upon the floor. In The Hammer Horror tradition she rots in moments to an unearthly cocophony of flies. A quick cut to Alex show a grim and steeled face. No remorse. No regrets. His plan has paid off.
The final shots are the perfect reversal of the opening camera play. The camera is now within the darkness again, from a shaft of light steps Alex accompanied by Gatri's Theme. In shillouette we see he carries the gun and a stake, which he conceals on his person. He strolls noncelently into the darkness outside, we see for the first time his home is a first floor flat as he stares down the stairwell at us. He pauses and lights up a smoke (his pipe, I'm told, discarding the cigarettes of 'Nervous Breakdown Alex' in favour of something more dignified - but from our viewpoint this is not too clear).
As he stands beneath a swollen full moon we hear his thoughts. Pure poetry;
"The darkest corners of this Earth have spawned the most unimaginable evil. Tonight I killed Lady Mendax. She told me I was a remarkable human being. Vampires are such vain and foolish creatures - I'm just a normal man forced to do remerakble things. Doubtless there will be reprisals, other vampires will come for revenge...
...and I'll be waiting for them."
And so we leave the spider awaiting in his web as the credits role and the feature closes.
SUMMARY
If you approach Looking for Gatri in the right frameof mind you're in for a treat. Clearly a great deal of time and effort went into created this featurette, and the philanthropic gesture of giving away the result over the internet is a fine one.
Hollywood this isn't. This is the work of amateur performers and artists doing their very best against the odds. Art for art's sake. This certanly isn't a feature for the big screen, or even the TV screen, but in creating Gatri, MalleuS have played a part in creating a whole new subspieces of visual entertainment. Video downloads from the internet are common - snippets of porno, movie trailers, video greeting cards - but MalleuS might be able to proclaim themsleves as the creators of the FIRST ever direct-to-internet movie, created SOULY for release over the web. This is pioneering stuff, and audatious too.
The plot is simple and yet ingenious. The performers are talented enough to keep their charcaters alive and interesting. The direction within the flat - by Andrew Morris - remains active in such a confined space and prevents the limited stage becoming stagnant. Ruth Elizabeth's direction on location is a sheer joy to behold - her understanding of the space within the frames shames some multi-million Hollywood moguls. The special effects vary from adiquate to good. Exploding mummy and wraith are superb - the transforming vampire is sufficent to get the point accross. The music is hauntung and beautiful.
Alex's pulling a gun to conclude the story almost teeters in Deus Ex Mechina, but it is done with such style and finess within the narrative that it is carried off.
Shane Semler points out that hollow bulletts filled with holy water wouldn't work;
Hollow point bullets actually flatten as they travel from the barrel to the intended target. This increases the diameter of the bullet to nearly an inch in width (in the case of something like a .45 caliber round). This causes far more damage than a normal round. Even if you could fill a bullet with a liquid of some sort, (this has been tried with lousy results) it would just squish out and turn to steam or fine mist, Holy-mist. It's not likely much of it would actually hit it's target. In addition, modern "hollow-point" bullets aren't actually hollow. They are just made of a soft metal.
I wouldn't have brought this up but for the fact that Mr. Jeffery (Sean Jeffey, author of Episode Three) is planning on using the Holy Water bullet again in "Echoes"(Of Gatri). I thought it was a bit silly in episode one but forgivable. However, I wouldn't keep using it again and again. Holy Water bullets are just plain impossible.
Gatri won't be using a gun again...
It's just not a very British way to kill people anyway - replies Andrew Morris.
But the hunting and the killing - in a very Britsh way - will continue for several more installments as MalleuS work on The Chronicles of Gatri episode two - Waking for Gatri.
In trying to make a net-dedicated movie MalleuS suceeded in spades. Now they collectively focus on further installements to release onto WWW.
Thinking back to the 1980's I remember the revolution of direct-to-video movies, the first being released in a storm of publicity as visual art found a forum other than theatres in which to air. MalleuS is responsible for the world's first direct-to-internet feature, a moment in history that went unnoticed by the masses.
