Mondo Macabro delivers another underseen classic with the Greek film The Fear on blu-ray for the first time anywhere. Feel the simmering tensions well up and explode in this provocative psychological thriller!
Anna is a city-dwelling student who returns to her family’s farm at a time where her father Dimitrios is struggling, working himself to bone all day while out getting drunk all night, neglecting his family. His son Anestis, Anna’s half brother, meanwhile has committed a heinous act against the pious deaf mute maid Hyrsa, and no one knows what has happened to her since she has gone missing. Anna begins to suspect Anestis of causing Hyrsa’s disappearance and starts spying on him in hopes of learning the truth. Will these buried atrocities come to light?
The Fear is a film that is all about what lies beneath the pastoral veneer of the rural countryside, the blood, sweat and tears that lie hidden below the surface waiting to boil over. It’s a vision of farm life both honest and heightened with a thick and palpable atmosphere of beauty and pain. Anna is the audience surrogate in many ways, an outsider thrust into the midst of a world she doesn’t fully comprehend. She can feel something is wrong. We know something is wrong. We see it happen. We feel creeping dread as Anna gets closer to the truth, tries to run from it, figuratively and literally. But the truth always has a way of coming out. It’s a shame that director Kostas Manoussakis only directed three films (I need to go track down his first two actually) because O Fovos is an excellent film of unsettling moments, subtle and powerful acting (especially by Anestis Vlahos as the step brother whose torment and conflict is expressed so vividly without overdoing it) and a strange and erratic score by composer Giannis Markopoulos (who composed many scores for Greek New Wave films at the time) designed to keep you off balance throughout the picture. The Fear is a film with no easy answers, without a purely evil, despicable antagonist. In the hands of an exploiteer, this film could’ve easily careened into Last House on the Left territory. But Anestis is played with a pitiable nuance. He is a product of his environment, berated by his tyrannical father, a bit dim-witted and left adrift with seething emotions that he lacks the capacity to deal with in a healthy way by his cold and distant mother. One wonders if this is the first whirlpool Anestis has found himself ensnared within.
Mondo’s transfer here, a new 2K restoration from the original negative, looks quite nice. The stark cinematography looking very clean and clear with a nice saturation in the black levels (a must for such a shadowy film). It’s not a perfect transfer by any means but it still looks very nice. The DTS-HD Stereo 2.0 audio track also comes across very crisply, showcasing the dissonant soundtrack and growing tension of the film quite well. On the extras front, we’ve got a photo and artwork gallery as well as a short memorial video of actress Elena Nathanail. The meatiest extra by far is an hour long documentary on director Manoussakis taken from what appears to be Greek television. It’s very informative, dedicating a large amount of time to O Fovos in particular. Also if you’re one of those lucky folks able to acquire Mondo Macabro’s signature red case limited edition, it also comes with a very nice booklet featuring an essay by Jacques Spohr covering the history of Greek New Wave cinema and O Fovos’ place in it as well as info about cast and crew on the film.
In a library full of excellent films, The Fear is easily one of the best that Mondo Macabro has put out. No mere exploitive trash pic, it is a deeply effecting and subtle psychodrama where strong writing, performances, directing and music come together to create something truly special.