Voyeur

Masters and Johnson through a Howard Johnson? The title “Voyeur” in this unnerving Netflix documentary is Gerald Foos, a former motel owner who spied on guests through vents and fancied himself some kind of sexual anthropologist.

And he’s not alone.

Gay Talese, famous New Yorker scribe, thinks so to and wants to bring the story out from behind the shadows, and past the ice machine and flashing sign.

Foos and the literally flamboyantly Gay form an unlikely twosome of tit-for-tat enabling. This will have the viewer question to what depths one should go for a story, and to what extent they’re complicit in watching this squalor as they wag an accusing finger.

The first third of Voyeur is a kind of “so what”? you’d ask yourself after a night of slumming through a Dateline NBC episode. It’s actually a tough slog with deviant Foos matter-of-factly detailing how he violated the privacy of hundreds of his guests through recollections from yellowing notes he’d taken during his nightly habitual viewing. Lucky for him, the statute of limitations has run out. And for that reason alone, Foos isn’t behind bars and in administrative segregation, and fearing for a shank that would surely forthcoming.

Nope. Foos is free, and largely depicted as a publicity hound and self-justifying egomaniac, which he clearly is.

The next bit of Voyeur is where things get more unsettling. And more compelling: Foos’ relationship with and dedication to his wife, is actually surprisingly touching…

But it turns out Foos isn’t entirely a reliable narrator either (though the key, sordid details are largely right) and as a consequence, the notoriously reliable Talese’s journalism starts to get picked apart by fact-checkers and competing media outlets, even to the point where he refuses to do publicity for the nonfiction work on which all of this is based.

There’s storytelling, and then there’s becoming part of the story. Hunter S Thompson had the good sense to remove himself from hanging with the Hells Angels (of course they had to beat the holy tar out of him for that teachable moment) while Talese seems clearly and unnecessarily friendly with this icky duo. After all, Foos bears the hallmarks associated with the sociopath that he clearly is: lack of remorse and shame, unreliability, poor judgment and failure to learn by experience, and pathological egocentricity to name but a few.

What kind of person would want to spend time than absolutely necessary with such a person? And what kind of person would want the details of his motel exploits brought to life? Watch Voyeur and have these questions answered, plus many many more.

***1/2 (out of 5)

The Psychic

Fulci-lite, is like lite-beer. Still a beer. And as such still enjoyable. The Psychic, aka, Sette note in nero (Seven Notes in Black) has that usual bit of Italian flare, wobbly-pop narrative and other-wordly dreamscapes that make these kinds of flicks enjoyable.

Virginia has psychic visions, stemming from girlhood when she has a harrowing hallucination of her mother plummeting off the white cliffs of Dover. These carry on to present day Florence, where she has a premonition of a body stuffed into a wall, the corpse of an elderly woman. When the “Carabinieri” start poking their noses around, they do find the deceased, however it’s the skeleton of a 25-year old.

The boys in blue implicate Virginia’s husband, Gianni, a Lothario who once dated the woman, but more damningly, it was in his fixer-upper house and behind his drywall, that the victim was stashed.

Dutiful Virginia teams up with Gianni’s sister Gloria, to put together a case to spring Gianni from the joint (this being the Italian justice system, Amanda Knox and all, one can’t be too careful. As Gianni puts it, re: a body found on his premises…”here it takes so little” [assumption of guilt]).

And it’s through her Virginia’s visions that clues unfold…a yellow cab, driven by a guy who ferried the deceased around on that fateful night, accompanied by another Lothario, an arts expert, Professor Rospini. Perhaps it was he did the nasty deed and who wanted to shut up a young paramour and prevent the missus from finding out? He certainly has a more viable motive.

The Psychic features some absolutely incredible music, written in part by genre heavy Fabio Frizzi, with a particularly foreboding piece being the alarm for a watch Gloria gives to Virginia.

With very mild gore, there are still enough Fulci touches to sate the masses. This was two years before the inestimable Zombi 2, and the classics he ripped out in the early 80s like The Beyond and City of the Living Dead.

***1/2 (out of 5)

[CHECK OUT OUR PODCAST DISCUSSION OF THE PSYCHIC!]