RED or DEAD?
From Aether, by Harry Kumel (Malpertuis) and Herman Wuyts.
The RED car speeds through the dark tunnel. In the driver's seat — The Girl.
The Girl arrives at her bf's block.
He rushes to see her.
An accident waiting to happen!
He falls — injured. Or DEAD? The RED ball bounces off — unharmed!
Hospital — the operating theater — ether!
A dream...of RED.
DEAD. On the operating table or on the stairs? Either way, DEAD is DEAD.
The RED ball bounces merrily away.
"I guess he's not coming," sighs the Girl, and drives merrily away into the dark tunnel.
***
David Cairns is the author of Shadowplay, the willfully eccentric film blog.
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Don’t forget the devil’s bouncing red ball in Fellini’s “Toby Dammit”
That seems like a natural link, doesn’t it? And I think Kumel and Wuyts came first. Mario Bava’s Kill Baby Kill! is often cited as an influence on Fellini, but he may have been shopping around…
I was thinking of The Prisoner, only this looks like a soccer ball (the texture and faux stitching in the close-up) as opposed to the large translucent sphere that menaced Number Six. Something devilish about the way it bounces along on its merry way, like the toy of a malicious child…what year’s the release of this?
1960. But the ball does behave rather like Rover in The Prisoner, especially in an aerial shot of it splashing into water which I haven’t included here. The dream-paranoia feeling, the open-topped sports car, and even the bongo soundtrack do somehow recall McGoohan’s masterpiece.
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