If you got Kino's "Labyrinth of Darkness" DVD because you were expecting feverish nightmares a la Jan Svankmajer, this particular short is the one that comes the closest to the title-descriptor. Barta's ideas from short to short seem to range over different ideas and conceits, tied together with a similar tone of wit, but this short stands out as one of his most particularly bizarre and disturbing.
A portly thief breaks into a mansion to get its riches, only to come across what he thinks is the owners... who are gratious enough to sit him down to a night of hedonism, gambling, and drinking. He gets really comfortable--and nigh incapable of movement--before realizing that his hosts' concerns are slightly more vampiric.
The approach is beautiful--Barta films the action in grainy black and white, a la a 1920s film, and then tints it so that the colors shift and soak through the screen like a hazy cloud in a fever dream. It's very precise, too, so that something you're looking at that you think is one color suddenly is another color, like in a dream.
It may not be the most original short out there, but it's certainly one of the best-done approaches. A lot of what Barta does reminds me of the "Scary Stories" series of children's books, this one in particular. This is a story well out of popular vampire lore and it just simply cannot be argued with. Along with "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" and "The Design", this is Jiri Barta's best work.
--PolarisDiB
A portly thief breaks into a mansion to get its riches, only to come across what he thinks is the owners... who are gratious enough to sit him down to a night of hedonism, gambling, and drinking. He gets really comfortable--and nigh incapable of movement--before realizing that his hosts' concerns are slightly more vampiric.
The approach is beautiful--Barta films the action in grainy black and white, a la a 1920s film, and then tints it so that the colors shift and soak through the screen like a hazy cloud in a fever dream. It's very precise, too, so that something you're looking at that you think is one color suddenly is another color, like in a dream.
It may not be the most original short out there, but it's certainly one of the best-done approaches. A lot of what Barta does reminds me of the "Scary Stories" series of children's books, this one in particular. This is a story well out of popular vampire lore and it just simply cannot be argued with. Along with "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" and "The Design", this is Jiri Barta's best work.
--PolarisDiB