Seizure

Seizure
United States - 1974
Director – Oliver Stone
Prism Entertainment/Cinerama Releasing, 1988, VHS

A very early film from Oliver Stone, in fact his second coming, according to IMDB only after the student film he made after he returned from Vietnam. Seizure is second to very few in my mind as far as pointless boredom go, and I found the deteriorated quality of this VHS tape and requisite tracking button struggle to be a welcome distraction from the affront to my aesthetic senses.


A bunch of rich, not really so good looking assholes show up at their buddy Blackstone's mansion for a weekend of rich people behaviors. Their women all wear small or large things and orbit subserviently within their mens domineering shadows.

Having a horrible dream, Edmund Blackstone induces a pall of intolerably monotonous yammering and criminally cheap minimalist soundtrack over the remaining film. During a discussion at the dinner table, he suddenly sees a dwarf (Hervé Villechaize, a.k.a. Tattoo) at the window and leaves the table to tuck his son into bed and terrify him by telling him about his inner demons.

 

I found some comfort in knowing that with each death and each vacant utterance to issue from the mouths of these detestable philistines, I was closer to the end, and having sat through this, I know what eyescratching ugliness is. The forthcoming seizure is undoubtedly symptomatic of alcohol poisoning.

Nonsensical dreaming insanity, the dwarf smashes through the dining room window, and imposes a cruel, terrifying footrace ending in the front lawn. The whole thing is observed by the son Jason, whom Blackstone and his wife then lock in a steamer trunk. Soon a Queen of Evil, and an Executioner character show up and the houseguests are each randomly disposed of in various forgettably undramatic and tame ways.